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THE LITERATI 



SOME HONEST OPINIONS ABOUT 



AUTORIAL MERITS AND DEMERITS, 



tosinttnl Wuh nf ^wanwlibf. 



TOGETHER WITH 



MARGINALIA, SUGGESTIONS, AND ESSAYS, 
BY EDGAR A. POE. 



If I have in any point receded from what is commonly received, it hath been for the purpose of 
proceeding melius and not in aliud. — Lord Bacon. 

Truth, peradventure, by force, may for a time be trodden down, but never, by any means, whatso- 
soever, can it be trodden out. — Lord Coke. 



WITH A SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR, 
BY RUFUS WILMOT GRISWOLD. 



NEW-YORK: 
J. S. REDFIELD, CLINTON HALL, NASSAU-STREET. 

BOSTON I B. B. MUSSEY <fe CO. 
1850. 



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Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by 

J. S. REDFIELD, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court, for the Southern District 

of New York. 



;43239 
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CONTENTS 



Page. 

PREFACE TO THE MEMOIR, v 

MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR,.. vii 

The Poetic Principle, 1 

Of Criticism — Public and Private, 21 < 

George Bush, 24 

George H. Colton, 26 

K. P. Willis,..-. 27 

William M. Gillespie, 34 

Charles F. Briggs, 35 

William Kirkland, 37 

t ohn W. Francis, 38 

na Cora Mowatt, 40 

irge B. Cheever, 44 

;rles Anthon, 45 

,PH HOYT, 47 

JAN C. Verplanck, , 49 

eeman Hunt, 50 

x J IERO Maroncelli, 52 

Laughton Osborn, 53 

Fitz-Greene Halleck, 56 

Ann S. Stephens, 62 

Evert A. Duyckinck, 63 

Mary Gove (Nichols,) • 65 

James Aldrich, 66 

Henry Carey, 68 

Christopher Pease Cranch, 69 

Sarah Margaret Fuller (d'Ossoli,) 72 

James Lawson, 79 

Caroline M. Kirkland, 80 

Prosper M. Wetmore, 83 

Emma C. Embury, 84 

Epes Sargent, 85 

Frances Sargent Osgood, 87 

Lydia M. Child, 99 

Thomas Dunn Brown, 101 

Elizabeth Bogart, 104 

Catherine M. Sedgwick, i 105 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 

Lewis Gatlord Clark, 107 

Anne C. Lynch, Ill 

Charles Fenno Hoffman, 112 

Mary E. Hewitt, 116 

Richard Adams Locke, 120 

Elizabeth Oakes Smith, 128 

J. G. C. Brainard, 138 

Rufus Dawes, 145 

Thomas Ward — " Flaccus," 157 

William W. Lord, 167 

William Cullen Bryant, ^ 178 

Nathaniel Hawthorne, 188 

Elizabeth Frieze Ellett, 202 

Amelia B. Welby, 203 

Bayard Taylor, 207 

Henry B. Hirst, 209 

Robert Walsh, 212 

Seba Smith, 215 

Margaret Miller and Lucretia Maria Davidson, 219 

William Ellery Channing, 229 

William Ross Wallace, 240 

Estelle Anna Lewis, 242 

Joel T. Headley, 249 

George P. Morris, 253 

Robert M. Bird, 257 

Cornelius Mathews, 262 

William Gilmore Simms, 272 

James Russell Lowell,.;. 275 

Rufus W. Griswold and the Poets,. . 283 

Mr. Longfellow and other Plagiarists, 1 292 

Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Willis, and the American Drama, 334 

Longfellow's Ballads, 363 

J. Rodman Drake and Thomas Moore — Fancy and Imagination,.... 374 

E. P. Whipple and other Critics, 382 

J. Fenimore Cooper, 389 

Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, 401 

R. H. Horne, 425 

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 444 

Charles Lever, , 447 

Francis Maryatt, 456 

Henry Cockton, 460 

Charles Dickens, 464 

Marginalia, 483 

Fifty Suggestions, 597 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 



PREFACE. 

Hitherto I have not written or published a syllable upon the subject of Mr. Poe's life, character, or genius, 
since I was informed, some ten days after his death, of my appointment to be bis literary executor. I did not 
suppose I was debarred from the expression of any feelings or opinions in the case by "the acceptance of this 
office, the duties of which I regarded as simply the collection of his works, and their publication, lor the benefit 
of the rightful inheritors of his property, in a form and manner that would probably have been most agreeable 
to his own wishes. I would gladly have declined a trust imposing so much labor, for I had been compelled by 
ill health to solicit the indulgence of my publishers, who lu.d many thousand dollars invested in an unfinished 
worlc under my direction ; but when I was told by several of Mr. Poe's most intimate friends — among others by 
the family of S. D. Lewis, Esq., to whom in his last years he was under greater obligations than to any or to 
all others — that he had long been in the habit of expressing a desire that in the event of his death I should be 
his editor, I yielded to the apparent necessity, and proceeded immediately with the preparation of the two vol- 
umes which have heretofore been published." But 1 had, at the request of the Editor of "The Tribune," written 
hastily a few paragraphs about Mr. Poe, which appeared in that paper with the telegraphic communication of 
his death ; and two or three of these paragraphs having been quoted by Mr. N. P. Willis, hi his Notice of Mr. 
Poe, were as a part of that Notice unavoidably reprinted in the volume of the deceased author's Tales. And my 
unconsidered and imperfect, but, as every one who knew its subject readily perceived, very kind article, was now 
•vehemently attacked. A writer under the signature of " George R. Graham," in a sophomorieal and trashy but 
widely circulated Letter, denounced it as "the fancy sketch of a jaundiced vision," "an immortal infamy," and 
its composition a " breach of trust." And to excuse his five months' silence, and to induce a belief that he did 
not know that what I had written was already published before /could have been advised that I was to be Mr. 
Poe's executor, (a condition upon which all the possible force of his Letter depends,) this silly and ambitious 
person, while represented as entertaining a friendship really passionate in its tenderness for "the poor author, 
(of whom in four years of his extremest poverty he had not purchased for his magazine a single line,) is made to 
say that in half a year he had not seen so noticeable an article, — though within a week after Mr. Poe's death it 
appeared in "The Tribune," in "The Home Journal," in three of the daily papers of his own city, and in "The 
Saturday Evening Post," of whi-.h he was or had been himself one of the chief proprietors and editors! Aud 
Mr. John Neal, too, who had never had even the "lightest personal acquaintance with Poe in his life, rushes 
from a sleep which the public had trusted was eternal, to declare that my characterization of Poe (which he is 
pleased to describe as "poetry, exalted poetry, poetry of astonishing and original strength ") is false and mali- 
cious, and that I am a " calumniator," a " Rhadamaiithus," etc. Both these writers — John Neal following the 
author of the Letter signed " George R. Graham " — not only assume what I have show-n to be false, (that the 
remarks on Poe's character were written by me as his executor,) but that there was a long, intense, and impla- 
cable enmity betwixt Poe and myself, which disqualified me for the office of his biographer. This scarcely 
needs an answer after the poet's dying request that I should be his editor ; but the manner hi which it has been 
urged, will, I trust, be a sufficient excuse for the following demonstration of its absurdity. 

My acquaintance with Mr. Poe commenced in the spring of 1841. He called at my hotel, and not finding me at 
home, left two letters of introduction. The next morning I visited him, and we had a long conversation about 
literature and literary men, pertinent to the subject of a book, " The Poets and Poetry of America," which I was 
then preparing for the press. The following letter was sent to me a few days afterwards : 

Philadelphia, March 29. 

R. W. Griswold, Esq. : My Dear Sir: — On the other leaf I send such poems as I think my best, from which 
you can select any which please your fancy. I should be proud to see one or two of them in your book. The 
one called " The Haunted Palace "is that of which I spoke in reference to Professor Longfellow 's plagiarism. I first 
published the "H. P." in Brooks's "Museum," a monthly journal at Baltimore, now dead. Afterwards, I em- 
bodied it in a tale called "The House of Usher," in Burton's magazine. Here it was, I suppose, that Professor 
Longfellow saw it; for, about six weeks afterwards, there appeared in the "Southern Literary Messenger" a 
poem by him called " The Beleaguered City," which may now be found in his volume. The identity in title is 
striking ; for by " The Haunted Palace " I mean to imply a mind haunted by phantoms — a disordered brain — and by 
the " Beleaguered City " Prof. L. means just the same." But the whole tournure of the poem is based upon mine, 
as you will see at once. Its allegorical conduct, the style of its versification and expression — all are mine. As 
I understood you to say that you meant to preface each set of poems by some biographical notice, I have ventured 
to send you the above memoranda — the particulars of which (in a case where an author is so little known as 
myself) might not be easily obtained elsewhere. "The Coliseum" was the prize poem alluded to. 

With high respect and esteem, I am your obedient servant, Edgar A. Poe. 

The next is without date : 

My Dear Sir : — I made use of your name with Carey & Hart, for a copy of your book, and am writing a review 
of it", which I shall send to Lowell for " The Pioneer." I like it decidedly. ' It is of immense importance, as a 
guide to what we have done ; but you have permitted your good nature to influence you to a degree : I would 
have omitted at least a dozen whom you have quoted, and I can think of five or six that should have been in. 
But with all its faults — you see I am perfectly frank with you — it is a better book than any other man in the 
United States could have made of the materials. This I will say. 

With high respect, I am your obedient servant, Edgar A. Poe. 

The next refers to some pecuniary matters : Philadelphia, June 11, 1843. 

Dear Griswold: — Can you not send me $51 I am sick, and Virginia is almost gone. Come and see me. 
Peterson savs you suspect me of a curious anonymous letter. I did not write it, but bring it along with you when 
you make the "visit you promised to Mrs. Clemm. I will try to fix that matter soon. Could you do "anything 
with my note ? Yours truly, E. A. P. 

We had no further correspondence for more than a year. In this period he delivered a lecture upon " The 
Poets and Poetry of America," in which my book under that title was, I believe, very sharply reviewed. Iu 



PREFACE TO THE MEMOIR. 



the meantime advertisement was made of my intention to publish "The Prose Writers of America," and I re- 
ceived, one day, just as I was leaving Philadelphia for New-York, the following letter : 

New- York, Jan. 10, 1845. 

Rev. Rufus W. Griswold: Sir — I perceive by a paragraph in the papers, that your "Prose Writers of Ameri- 
ca " is in press. Unless your opinions of my literary character are entirely changed, you will, I think, like 
somethiug of mine, and you are welcome to whatever best pleases you, if you will permit me to furnish a cor- 
rected copy; but with your present feelings you can hardly do me justice in any criticism, and I shall be glad if 
you will simply say after my name : "Born 1811 ; published Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque in 1839; 
has resided latterly in New- York." Your obedient servant, Edgar A. Poe. 

I find my answer to this among his papers : Philadelphia, Jan. 11, 1845. 

Sir: — Although I have some cause of quarrel with you, as you seem to remember, I do not under any circum- 
stances permit, as you have repeatedly charged, mv personal relations to influence the expression of my opin- 
ions as a critic. By the inclosed proof-sheets of what I had written before the reception of your note, you will 
see that I think quite as well of your works as I did when I had the pleasure of being Your friend, 

R. \V. Griswold. 

This was not mailed until the next morning ; I however left Philadelphia the same evening, and in the course 
of the following day Poe and myself met in the office of "The Tribune," but without any recognition. Soon 
after he received my note, he sent the following to my hotel : New-York, Jan. 16, 1845. 

Dear Griswold — If you will permit me to call you so — your letter occasioned me first pain and then pleasure : 
pain, because it gave me to see that I had lost, through my own folly, an honorable friend : — -pleasure, because I 
saw in it a hope of reconciliation. I have been aware, for several weeks, that my reasons for speaking of vour 
book as I did, (of yourself I have always spoken kindly,) were based in the malignant slanders of a mischief- 
maker by profession. Still, as I supposed you irreparably offended, I could make no advances when we met at 
the " Tribune " office, although I longed to'do so. I know of nothing which would give me more sincere pleasure 



than your accepting these apologies, and meeting me as a friend. If you can. do this, and forget the past, let 
know where I shall call on you — or come and see me at the "Mirror" office, any morning about ten. We can 
then talk over the other matters, which, to me at least, are far less important than your good will. 

Very truly yours, Edgar A. Poe. 

His next letter is dated February 24, 1845 : 

My dear Griswold : — A thousand thanks for your kindness in the matter of those books, which I could not af- 
ford to buy, and had so much need of. Soon after seeing you, I sent you, through Zieber, all my poems worth 
republishing, and I presume they reached you. I was sincerely delighted with what you said of them, and if 
you will write your criticism in the form of" a preface, I shall be greatly obliged to you. I say this not because 
y->u praised me : everybody praises me now : but because you so perfectly understand me, or what I have aimed 
at, in all my poems : I did not think you had so much delicacy of appreciation joined with your strong sense ; 1 
can say truly that no man's approbation gives me so much pleasure. 1 send you with this another package, also 
through Zieber, by Burgess & Stringer. It contains, in the way of essay, " Mesmeric Revelation," which I would 
like to have go in, even if you have to omit the " House of Usher." I send also corrected copies of (in the way 
of funny criticism, but you don't like this) "PTaceus," which conveys a tolerable idea of my style; and of my 
serious manner " Barnaby Rudge " is a good specimen. In the tale line, "The Murders of the Rue Morgue," 
"The Gold Bug," and the "Man that was Used Up," — far more than enough, but you can select to suit yourself. 
I prefer the "G. B." to the "M. in the R. M." I have taken a third interest in the "Broadway Journal," and 
will be glad if you could send me anything for it. Why not let me anticipate the book publication of your 
splendid essay on Milton ? Truly yours, Pob. 

The next is without date : 

Dear Griswold : — I return the proofs with many thanks for your attentions. The poems look quite as well in 
the short metres as in the long ones, and I am quite content as it is. In " The Sleeper " you have " Forever with 
unclosed eye " for " Forever with unopen'd eye." Is it possible to make the correction? I presume you under- 
stand that in the repetition of my Lecture on the Poets, (in N. Y.) I left out all that was offensive to yourself. I 
am ashamed of myself that I ever said anything of you that was so unfriendly or so unjust ; but what I did say 
I am confident has been misrepresented to you. See my notice of C. F. Hoffman's (?) sketch of you. 

Very sincerely yours, Poe. 

On the twenty-sixth of October, 1845, he wrote : 

My dear Griswold : — Will you aid me at a pinch — at one of the greatest pinches conceivable 1 If you will, I 
will be indebted to you for life. After a prodigious deal of manoeuvering, I have succeeded in getting the " Broad- 
way Journal " entirely within my own control. It will be a fortune to me if I can hold it — and I can do it easily 
with a very trifling aid from my friends. May I count you as one « Lend me $50, and you shall never have 
cause to regret it. Truly yours, Edgar A. Poe. 

And on the first of November : 

My dear Griswold: — Thank you for the $25. And since you will allow me to draw upon you for the other 
half of what I asked, if it shall be needed at the end of a month, I am just as grateful as if it were all in hand, 
— for my friends here have acted generously by me. Don't have any more doubts of my success. I am, by the 
way, preparing an article about you for the' B. J., in which I do you justice — which is all you can ask of any one. 

Ever truly yours, Edgar A. Poe. 

The next is without date, but appears to have been written early in 1849 : 

Dear Griswold: — Your uniform kindness leads me to hope that you will attend to this little matter of Mrs. 

L , to whom I truly think you have done less than justice. I am ashamed to ask favors of you, to whom I 

am so much indebted, but I have promised Mrs. L this. They lied to you, (if you told what he says 

you told him,) upon the subject of my forgotten Lecture on the American Poets, and' I take this opportunity to 
say that what I have always held inconversations about you, and what I believe to be entirely true, as far as it 
goes, is contained in my notice of your "Female Poets of America," in the forthcoming "Southern Literary 
Messenger." By glancing at what I have published about you, (Aut. in Graham, 1841 ; Review in Pioneer, 
1843; notice in B. Journal, 1845; Letter in Int., 1847 ; and the'Review of your Female Poets,) you will see that 
I have never hazarded my own reputation by a disrespectful word of you," though there were, "as I long ago ex- 
plained, in consequence of 's false imputation of that beastly article to you, some absurd jokes at your ex- 
pense in the Lecture at Philadelphia. Come up and see me : the cars pass within a few rods of the New- York 
Hotel, where I have called two or three times without finding you in. Yours truly, Poe. 

I soon after visited him at Fordham, and passed two or three hours with him. The only letter he afterward 
sent me — at least the only one now in my possession — follows : 

Dear Griswold: — I inclose perfect copies of the lines " For Annie " and " Annabel Lee," in hopes that you 
may make room for them in your new edition. As regards "Lenore," (which you were kind enough to say yon 
would insert,) I would prefer the concluding stanza to run as here written. ... It is a point of no great impor- 
tance, but in one of your editions you have given my sister's age instead of mine. I was born in Dec. 181S; my 
sister, Jan. 1811. [The date of his birth to which he refers was printed from his statement in the memoranda 
referred to in the first of the letters here printed.— R. W. G.j Willis, whose good opjnioo I value highly, and 
of whose good word I have a right to be proud, has done ma the honor to speak very pointedly in praise of '-The 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. vii 



Raven." I inclose what he said, and if you could contrive to introduce it, you would render me an < 

favor, and greatly further my literary interests, at a point where I am most anxious they should be advanced. 

Truly yours, E. A. Poe. 

P. S.— Considering my indebtedness to you, can you not sell to Graham or to Godey (with whom, you know, 
I cannot with the least self-respect again have anything to do directly)— can you not sell to one of these men, 
"Annabel Lee," say for $50, and credit me that sum? Either of them could print it before you wiU need it for 
your book. Mem. The Eveleth you ask about is a Yankee impertinent, who, knowing my extreme poverty, 
has for years pestered me with unpaid letters; but I believe almost every literary man of any note has suffered 
in the same way. I am surprised that you have escaped. Poe. 

These are all the letters (unless I have given away some notes of bis to autograph collectors) ever received by 
me from Mr. Poe. They are a sufficient answer to the article by John Neal, and to that under the signature of 
" George R. Graham," which have induced their publication. I did not undertake to dispose of the poem of 
"Annabel Lee," but upon the death of the author quoted it in the notice of him in "The Tribune," and I was 
sorry to learn soon after that it had been purchased and paid for by the proprietors of both " Sartain's Magazine," 
and " The Southern Literary Messenger." R. W. G. 

New-Yobk, September 2, 1850. 



MEMOIR. 



The family of Edgar A. Poe was one of the oldest and most reputable in 
Baltimore. David Poe, his paternal grandfather, was a Quartermaster-Gene- 
ral in the Maryland line during the Revolution, and the intimate friend of 
Lafayette, who, during his last visit to the United States, called personally 
upon the General's widow, and tendered her acknowledgments for the ser- 
vices rendered to him by her husband. His great-grandfather, John Poe, 
married in England, Jane, a daughter of Admiral James McBride, noted in 
British navah history, and claiming kindred with some of the most illustrious 
English families. His father, David Poe, jr., the fourth son of the Quarter- 
master-General, was several years a law student in Baltimore, but becoming 
enamored of an English actress, named Elizabeth Arnold, whose prettmess 
and vivacity more than her genius for the stage made her a favorite, he 
eloped with her, and after a short period, having married hei\ became him- 
self an actor. They continued six or seven years in the theatres of the prin- 
cipal cities, and finally died, within a few weeks of each other, in Richmond, 
leaving three children, Henry, Edgar, and Rosalie, in utter destitution. 

Edgar Poe, who was born in Baltimore, in January, 1811, was at this pe- 
riod of remarkable beauty, and precocious wit. Mr. John Allan, a merchant 
of large fortune and liberal disposition, who had been intimate with his 
parents, having no children of his own, adopted him, and it was generally un- 
derstood among his acquaintances that he intended to make him the heir of 
his estate. The proud, nervous irritability of the boy's nature was fostered 
by his guardian's Well-meant but ill-judged indulgence. Nothing was per- 
mitted which could " break his spirit." He must be the master of his mas- 
ters, or not have any. An eminent and most estimable gentleman of Rich- 
mond has written to me, that when Poe w r as only six or seven years of age, 
he went to a school kept by a widow of excellent character, to whom was 
committed the instruction of the children of some of the principal families 
in the city. A portion of the grounds was used for the cultivation of vegeta- 
bles, and its invasion by her pupils strictly forbidden. A trespasser, if dis- 
covered, was commonly made to wear, during school hours, a turnip or carrot, 
or something of this sort, attached to his neck as a sign of disgrace. On one 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 



occasion Poe, having violated the rules, was decorated with the promised 
badge, which he wore in sullenness until the dismissal of the boys, when, that 
the full extent of his wrong might be understood by his patron, of whose 
sympathy he was confident, he eluded the notice of the schoolmistress, who 
would have relieved him of his esculent, and made the best of his way home, 
with it dangling at his neck. Mr. Allan's anger was aroused, and he pro- 
ceeded instantly to the' school-room, and after lecturing the astonished dame 
upon the enormity of such an insult to his son and to himself, demanded his 
account, determined that the child should not again be subjected to such 
tyranny. Who can estimate the effect of this puerile triumph upon the 
growth of that morbid self-esteem which characterized the author in after- 
life? 

In 1816, he accompanied Mr. and Mrs. Allan to Great Britain, visited the 
most interesting portions of the country, and afterwards passed four or five 
years in a school kept at Stoke Newington, near London, by the Rev. Dr. 
Bransby. In his tale, entitled " William Wilson," he has introduced a striking 
description of this school and of his life here. He says : 

" My earliest recollections of a school life, are connected with a large, rambling, Eliza- 
bethan house, in a misty-looking village of England, where were a vast number of gigan- 
tic and gnarled trees, and where all the houses were excessively ancient. In truth, it 
was a dream-like and spirit-soothing place, that venerable old town. At this moment, in 
fancy, I feel the refreshing chilliness of its deeply-shadowed avenues, inhale the fragrance 
of its thousand shrubberies, and thrill anew with undefinable delight, at the deep hollow 
note of the church-bell, breaking, each hour, with sullen and sudden roar, upon the still- 
ness of the dusky atmosphere in which the fretted Gothic steeple lay embedded and 
asleep. It gives me, perhaps, as much of pleasure as I can now in any manner experience, 
to dwell upon minute recollections of the school and its concerns. Steeped in misery as 
I am — misery, alas ! only too real — I shall be pardoned for seeking relief, however slight 
and temporary, in the weakness of a few rambling details. These, moreover, utterly 
trivial, and even ridiculous in themselves, assume, to my fancy, adventitious importance, 
as connected with a period and a locality when and where I recognise the first ambigu- 
ous monitions of the destiny which afterwards so fully overshadowed me. Let me then 
remember. The house, I have said, was old and irregular. The grounds were extensive, 
and a high and solid brick wall, topped with a bed of mortar and broken glass, encom- 
passed the whole. This prison-like rampart formed the limit of our domain ; beyond it 
we saw but thrice a week — once every Saturday afternoon, when, attended by two 
ushers, we were permitted to take brief walks in a body through some of the neighbor- 
ing fields — and twice during Sunday, when we were paraded in the same formal manner 
to the morning and evening service in the one church of the village. Of this church the 
principal of our school was pastor. With how deep a spirit of wonder and perplexity was 
I wont to regard him from our remote pew in the gallery, as, with step solemn and slow, 
he ascended the pulpit ! This reverend man, with countenance so demurely benign, with 
robes so glossy and so clerically flowing, with wig so minutely powdered, so rigid and so 
vast, — could this be he who, of late, with sour visage, and in snuffy habiliments, admin- 
istered, ferule in hand, the Draconian Laws of the academy? Oh, gigantic paradox, too 
utterly monstrous for solution ! At an angle of the ponderous wall frowned a more pon- 
derous gate. It was riveted and studded with iron bolts, and surmounted with jagged iron 
spikes. What impressions of deep awe did it inspire ! It was never opened save for the 
three periodical egressions and ingressions already mentioned ; then, in every creak of its 
mighty hinges, we found a plenitude of mystery — a world of matter for solemn remark, 
or for more solemn meditation. The extensive enclosure was irregular in form, having 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 



many capacious recesses. Of these, three or four of the largest constituted the play 
ground. It was level, and covered with fine hard gravel. I well remember it had no 
trees, nor benches, nor anything similar within it. Of course it was in the rear of the 
house. In front lay a small parterre, planted with box and other shrubs; but through this 
sacred division we passed only upon rare occasions indeed — such as a first advent to 
school or final departure thence, or perhaps, when a parent or friend having called for 
us, we joyfully took our way home for the Christmas or Midsummer holidays. But the 
house ! — how quaint an old building was this ! — tome how veritably a palace of enchant- 
ment ! There was really no end to its windings — to its incomprehensible subdivisions. 
It was difficult at any given time, to say with certainty upon which of its two stories one 
happened to be. From each room to every other there were sure to be found three or 
four steps either in ascent or descent. Then the lateral branches were innumerable — 
inconceivable— and so returning in upon themselves, that our most exact ideas in regard 
to the whole mansion were not very far different from those with which we pondered 
upon infinity. During the five years of my residence here, I was never able to ascertain 
with precision, in what remote locality lay the little sleeping apartment assigned to my- 
self and some eighteen or twenty other scholars. The school room was the largest in the 
house — I could not help thinking, in the world. It was very long, narrow, and dismally 
low, with pointed Gothic windows and a ceiling of oak. In a remote and terror-inspiring 
angle was a square enclosure of eight or ten feet, comprising the sanctum, ' during 
hours,' of our principal, the Reverend Dr. Bransby. It was a solid structure, with massy 
door, sooner than open which in the absence of the ' Dominie,' we would all have will- 
ingly perished by the peine forte et dure. In other angles were two other similar boxes, 
far less reverenced, indeed, but still greatly matters of awe. One of these was the pulpit 
of the ' classical' usher, one of the ' English and mathematical.' Interspersed about 
the room, crossing and recrossing in endless irregularity, were innumerable benches and 
desks, black, ancient, and time-worn, piled desperately with much-bethumbed books, and 
so beseamed with initial letters, names at full length, grotesque figures, and other multi- 
plied efforts of the knife, as to have entirely lost what little of original form might have 
been their portion in days long departed. A huge bucket with water stood at one extre- 
mity of the room, and a clock of stupendous dimensions at the other. 

" Encompassed by the massy walls of this venerable academy, I passed yet not in tedium 
or disgust, the years of the third lustrum of my life. The teeming brain of childhood requires 
no external world of incident to occupy or amuse it ; and the apparently dismal monotony 
of a school was replete with more intense excitement than my riper youth has derived from 
luxury, or my full manhood from crime. Yet I must believe that my first mental devel- 
opment had in it much of the uncommon — even much of the outre. Upon mankind at 
large the events of very early existence rarely leave in mature age any definite impres- 
sion. All is gray shadow — a weak and irregular remembrance — an indistinct regather- 
ing of feeble pleasures and phantasmagoric pains. With me this is not so. In childhood 
I must have felt with the energy of a man what I now find stami>ed upon memory in 
lines as vivid, as deep, and as durable as the exergues of the Carthaginian medals. Yet 
in fact — in the fact of the world's view — how little was there to remember. The morn- 
ing's awakening, the nightly summons to bed ; the connings, the recitations ; the period- 
ical half-holidays and perambulations ; the play-ground, with its broils, its pastimes, its 
intrigues ; these, by a mental sorcery long forgotten, were made to involve a wilderness 
of sensation, a world of rich incident, an universe of varied emotion, of excitement the 
most passionate and spirit-stirring. " Ok, le bon temps, que ce siecle de fer .'" 

In 1822, he returned to the United States, and after passing a few months 
at an Academy in Richmond, he entered the University at Charlottesville, 
where he led a very dissipated life ; the manners which then prevailed there 
•were extremely dissolute, and he was known as the wildest and most reck- 
less student of his class ; but his unusual opportunities, and the remarkable 
ease with which he mastered the most difficult studies, kept him all the 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 



while in the first rank for scholarship, and he would have graduated with the 
highest honors, had not his gambling, intemperance, and other vices, induced 
his expulsion from the university. 

At this period he was noted for feats of hardihood, strength and activity, 
and on one occasion, in a hot day of June, he swam from Richmond to War- 
wick, seven miles and a half, against a tide running probably from two to 
three miles an hour* He was expert at fence, had some skill in drawing, 
and was a ready and eloquent conversationist and declaimer. 

His allowance of money while at Charlottesville had been liberal, but he 
quitted the place very much in debt, and when Mr. Allan refused to accept 
some of the drafts with which he had paid losses in gaming, he wrote to him 
an abusive letter, quitted his house, and soon after left the country with the 
Quixotic intention of joining the Greeks, then in the midst of their struggle 
with the Turks. He never reached his destination, and we know but little 
of his adventures in Europe for nearly a year. By the end of this time he 
had made his way to St. Petersburgh, and our Minister in that capital, the 
late Mr. Henry Middleton, of South Carolina, was summoned one morning to 
save him from penalties incurred in a drunken debauch. Through Mr. Mid- 
dleton's kindness he was set at liberty and enabled to return to this country. 

His meeting with Mr. Allan was not very cordial, but that gentleman de- 
clared himself willing to serve him in any way that should seem judicious ; 
and when Poe expressed some anxiety to enter the Military Academy, he 
induced Chief Justice Marshall, Andrew Stevenson, General Scott, and other 
eminent persons, to sign an application which secured his appointment to a 
scholarship in that institution. 

Mrs. Allan, whom Poe appears to have regarded with much affection, and 
who had more influence over him than any one else at this period, died on the 
twenty-seventh of February, 1829, which I believe was just before Poe left 
Richmond for West Point. It has been erroneously stated by all Poe's 
biographers, that Mr. Allan was now sixty -five years of age, and that Miss 
Paterson, to whom he was married afterward, was young enough to be his 
grand-daughter. Mr. Allan was in his forty-eighth year, and the difference 
between his age and that of his second wife was not so great as justly to 
attract any observation. 

For a few weeks the cadet applied himself with much assiduity to his stu- 
dies, and he became at once a favorite with his mess and with the officers 
and professors of the Academy ; but his habits of dissipation were renewed ; 
he neglected his duties and disobeyed orders ; and in ten months from his 
matriculation he was cashiered. 

* This statement was first printed during Mr. Poe's life-time, and its truth being ques- 
tioned in some of the journals, the following certificate was published by a distinguished 
gentleman of Virginia : 

"I was one of several who witnessed this swimming feat. We accompanied Mr. Poe 
in boats. Messrs. Robert Stannard, John Lyle, (since dead) Robert Saunders, John Mun- 
ford, I think, and one or two others, were also of the party. Mr. P. did not seem at all 
fatigued, and walked back to Richmond immediately after the feat — which was under- 
taken for a wager. "Robert G. Cabell." 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 



He went again to Richmond, and was received into the family of Mr. 
Allan, who was disposed still to be his friend, and in the event of his good 
behavior to treat him as a son ; but it soon became necessary to close his 
doors against him forever. According to Poe's own statement he ridiculed 
the marriage of his patron with Miss Paterson, and had a quarrel with her ; but 
a different story,* scarcely suitable for repetition here, was told by the friends 
of the other party. Whatever the circumstances, ihey parted in anger, and Mr. 
Allan from that time declined to see or in any way to assist him. Mr. Allan 
died in the spring of 1834, in the fifty-fourth year of his age, leaving three 
children to share his property, of which not a mill was bequeathed to Poe. 

Soon after he left West Point Poe had printed at Baltimore a small volume 
of verses, (" Al Aaraaf," of about four hundred lines, " Tamerlane," of about 
three hundred hues, with smaller pieces,) and the favorable manner in 
which it was commonly referred to confirmed his belief that he might suc- 
ceed in the profession of literature. The contents of the book appear to have 
been written when he was between sixteen and nineteen years of age ; but 
though they illustrated the character of his abilities and justified his anticipa- 
tions of success, they do not seem to me to evince, all things considered, a 
very remarkable precocity. The late Madame d'Ossoli refers to some of 
them as the productions of a boy of eight or ten years, but I believe there is 
no evidence that anything of his which has been published was written be- 
fore he left the university. Certainly, it was his habit so constantly to labor 
upon what he had produced — he was at all times so anxious and industrious 
in revision — that his works, whenever first composed, displayed the perfection 
of his powers at the time when they were given to the press. 

His contributions to the journals attracted little attention, and his hopes 
of gaining a living in this way being disappointed, he enlisted in the army as 
a private soldier. How long he remained in the service I have not been able 
to ascertain. He was recognised by officers who had known him at West 
Point, and efforts were made, privately, but with prospects of success, to ob- 
tain for him a commission, when it was discovered by his friends that he had 
deserted. 

He had probably found relief from the monotony of a soldier's fife in lite- 
rary composition. His mind was never in repose, and without some such re- 
sort the dull routine, of the camp or barracks would have been insupportable. 

* The writer of an eulogium upon the life and genius of Mr. Poe, in the Southern Lite- 
rary Messenger, for March, 1850, thus refers to this point in his history : 

"The story of the other side is different; and if true, throws a dark shade upon the 
quarrel, and a very ugly light upon Poe's character. We shall not insert it, because it is 
one of those relations which we think with Sir Thomas Browne, should never be re- 
corded,— being "verities whose truth we fear and heartily wish there were no truth 

therein whose relations honest minds do deprecate. For of sins heteroclital, and such 

as want name or precedent, there is oft-times a sin even in their history. We desire no 
record of enormities : sins should be accounted new. They omit of their monstrosity as 
they fall from their rarity ; for men count it venial to err with their forefathers, and fool- 
ishly conceive they divide a sin in its society In things of this nature, silence com- 

mendeth history : 'tis the veniable part of things lost ; wherein there must never arise a 
Pancirollus, nor remain any register but that of hell." 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 



"When he next appears, he has a volume of MS. stories, which he desires to 
print under the title of " Tales of the Folio Club." An offer by the proprie- 
tor of the Baltimore " Saturday Visiter," of two prizes, one for the best tale 
and one for the best poem, induced him to submit the pieces entitled " MS. 
found in a Bottle," " Lionizing," " The Visionary," and three others, with 
" The Coliseum," a poem, to the committee, which consisted of Mr. John P. 
Kennedy, the author of " Horse Shoe Robinson," Mr. J. H. B. Latrobe, and 
Dr. James H. Miller. Such matters are usually disposed of in a very off- 
hand way: Committees to award literary prizes drink to the payer's health 
in good wines, over unexamined MSS., which they submit to the discretion 
of publishers with permission to use their names in such a way as to promote 
the publishers' advantage. So perhaps it would have been in this case, but 
that one of the committee, taking up a little book remarkably beautiful and 
distinct in caligraphy, was tempted to read several pages ; and becoming inter- 
ested, he summoned the attention of the company to the half-dozen composi- 
tions it contained. It was unanimously decided that the prizes should be 
paid to " the first of geniuses who had written legibly." Not another MS. was 
unfolded. Immediately the " confidential envelope " was opened, and the 
successful competitor was found to bear the scarcely known name of Poe. 
The committee indeed awarded to him the premiums for both the tale and 
the poem, but subsequently altered their decision, so as to exclude him from 
the second premium, in consideration of his having obtained the higher one. 
The prize tale was the " MS. found in a Bottle." This award was published 
on the twelfth of October, 1833. The next day the publisher called to see 
Mr. Kennedy, and gave him an account of the author, which excited his curio- 
sity and sympathy, and caused him to request that he should be brought to 
Ins office. Accordingly he was introduced ; the prize-money had not yet 
been paid, and he was in the costume in which he had answered the adver- 
tisement of his good fortune. Thin, and pale even to ghastliness, his whole 
appearance indicated sickness and the utmost destitution. A well-worn 
frock coat concealed the absence of a shirt, and imperfect boots disclosed the 
want of hose. But the eyes of the young man were luminous with intelli- 
gence and feeling, and his voice and conversation and manners all won upon 
the lawyer's regard. Poe told his history, and his ambition, and it was de- 
termined that he should not want means for a suitable appearance in society, 
nor opportunity for a just display of his abilities in literature. Mr. Kennedy 
accompanied him to a clothing store, and purchased for him a respectable 
suit, with changes of linen, and sent him to a bath, from which he returned 
with the suddenly regained style of a gentleman. 

His new friends were very kind to him, and availed themselves of every 
opportunity to serve him. Near the close of the year 1834 the late Mr. T. 
"W. White established in Richmond the " Southern Literary Messenger." He 
was a man of much simplicity, purity and energy of character, but not a 
writer, and he frequently solicited of his acquaintances literary assistance. 
On receiving from him an application for an article, early in 1835, Mr. Ken- 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. xiii 

nedy, who was busy with the duties of his profession, advised Poe to send 

one, and in a few weeks he had occasion to enclose the following answer to a 

letter from Mr. White. 

" Baltimore, April 13, 1835. 

" Dear Sir : Foe did right in referring to me. He is very clever with his pen — classical 
and scholarlike. He wants experience and direction, but I have no doubt he can be made 
very useful to you. And, poor fellow ! he is very poor. I told him to write something 
for every number of your magazine, and that you might find it to your advantage to give 
him some permanent employ. He has a volume of very bizarre tales in the hands of 

, in Philadelphia, who for a year past has been promising to publish them. This 

young fellow is highly imaginative, and a little given to the terrific. He is at work upon 
a tragedy, but I have turned him to drudging upon whatever may make money, and I 
have no doubt you and he will find your account in each other." 

In the next number of the " Messenger " Mr. White announced that Poe was 
its editor, or in other words, that he had made arrangements with a gentle- 
man of approved literary taste and attainments to whose especial manage- 
ment the editorial department would be confided, and it was declared that 
this gentleman would " devote his exclusive attention to the work." Poe 
continued, however, to reside in Baltimore, and it is probable that he was 
engaged only as a general contributor and a writer of critical notices of books. 
In a letter to Mr. White, under the date of the thirtieth of May, he says : 

"In regard to my critique of Mr. Kennedy's novel I seriously feel ashamed of what 1 
have written. I fully intended to give the work a thorough review, and examine it in 
detail. Ill health alone prevented me from so doing. At the time I made the hasty 
sketch I sent you, I was so ill as to be hardly able to see the paper on which I wrote, 
and I finished it in a state of complete exhaustion. I have not, therefore, done anything 
like justice to the book, and I am vexed about the matter, for Mr. Kennedy has proved 
himself a kind friend to me in every respect, and I am sincerely grateful to him for many 
acts of generosity and attention. You ask me if lam perfectly satisfied with your course. 
1 reply that I am — entirely. My poor services are not worth what you give me for them." 

About a month afterward he wrote : 

" You ask me if I would be willing to come on to Richmond if you should have occasion 
for my services during the coming winter. I reply that nothing would give me greater 
pleasure. I have been desirous for some time past of paying a visit to Richmond, and 
would be glad of any reasonable excuse for so doing. Indeed I am anxious to settle my- 
self in that city, and if, by any chance, you hear of a situation likely to suit me, I would 
gladly accept it, were the salary even the merest trifle. I should, indeed, feel myself 
greatly indebted to you if through your means I could accomplish this object. What you 
say in the conclusion of your letter, in relation to the supervision of proof-sheets, gives 
me reason to hope that possibly yoxi might find something for me to do in your office. 
If so, I should be very glad— for at present only a very small portion of my time is 
employed." 

He continued in Baltimore till September. In this period he wrote seve- 
ral long reviewals, which for the most part were rather abstracts of works 
than critical discussions, and published with others, " Hans Pfaall," a story 
in some respects very similar to Mr. Locke's celebrated account of Herschell's 
Discoveries in the Moon. At first he appears to have been ill satisfied with 
Richmond, or with his duties, for in two or three weeks after his removal to 
that city we find Mr. Kennedy writing to him : 

"I am sorry to see you in such plight as your letter shows you in. It is strange that 
just at this time, when everybody is praising you, and when fortune is beginning to smile 



xiv MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 

upon your hitherto wretched circumstances, you should be invaded by these blue devils. 
It belongs, however, to your age and temper to be thus buffeted — but be assured, it only 
wants a little resolution to master the adversary forever. You will doubtless do well 
henceforth in literature, and add to your comforts as well as to your reputation, which it 
gives me great pleasure to assure you is everywhere rising in popular esteem." 

But he could not bear his good fortune. On receiving a month's salary- 
he gave himself up to habits which only necessity had restrained at Balti- 
more. For a week he was in a condition of brutish drunkenness, and Mr. 
White dismissed him. When he became sober, however, he had no resource 
but in reconciliation, and he wrote letters and induced acquaintances to call 
upon Mr. White with professions of repentance and promises of reformation. 
With his usual considerate and judicious kindness that gentleman answered 
him: 

" J\Iy dear Edgar : I cannot address you in such language as this occasion and my feel- 
ings demand : I must be content to speak to you in my plain way. That you are sincere 
in all your promises I firmly believe. But when you once again tread these streets, I have 
my fears that your resolutions will fail, and that you will again drink till your senses are 
lost. If you rely on your strength you are gone. Unless you look to your Maker for help 
you will not be safe. How much I regretted parting from you is known to Him only and 
myself. I had become attached to you ; I am still ; and I would willingly say return, 
did not a knowledge of your past life make me dread a speedy renewal of our separation. 
If you would make yourself contented with quarters in my house, or with any other pri- 
vate family, where liquor is not used, I should think there was some hope for you. But, 
if you go to a tavern, or to any place where it is used at table, you are not safe. You 
have fine talents, Edgar, and you ought to have them respected, as well as yourself. 
Learn to respect yourself, and you will soon find that you are respected. Separate your- 
self from the bottle, and from bottle companions, forever. Tell me if you can and will do 
so. If you again become an assistant in my office, it must be understood that all engage- 
ments on my part cease the moment you get drunk. I am your true friend. T. W. W." 

A new contract was arranged, but Poe's irregularities frequently inter- 
rupted the kindness and finally exhausted the patience of his generous though 
methodical employer, and in the number of the " Messenger " for January, 
1837, he thus took leave of its readers : 

" Mr. Poe's attention being called in another direction, he will decline, with the present 
number, the editorial duties of the Messenger. His Critical Notices for this month end 
with Professor Anthon's Cicero — what follows is from another hand. With the best 
wishes to the magazine, and to its few foes as well as many friends, he is now desirous 
of bidding all parties a peaceful farewell." 

While in Richmond, with an income of but five hundred dollars a year, 
he had married his cousin, Virginia Clemm, a very amiable and lovely girl, 
who was as poor as himself, and little fitted, except by her gentle temper, to 
be the wife of such a person. He went from Richmond to Baltimore, and 
after a short time, to Philadelphia, and to New- York. A slight acquaintance 
with Dr. Hawks had led that acute and powerful writer to invite his contri- 
butions to the " New- York Review," and he had furnished for the second 
number of it (for October, 1837) an elaborate but not very remarkable arti- 
cle upon Stephens's then recently published " Incidents of Travel in Egypt, 
Arabia Petrea, and the Holy Land." His abilities were not of the kind de- 
manded for such a work, and he never wrote another paper for this or for 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 



any other Review of the same class. He had commenced in the " Literary- 
Messenger," a story of the sea, under the title of " Arthur Gordon Pym,"* 
and upon the recommendation of Mr. Paulding and others, it was printed by 
the Harpers. It is his longest work, and is not without some sort of merit, 
but it received little attention. The publishers sent one hundred copies to 
England, and being mistaken at first for a narrative of real experiences, it 
was advertised to be reprinted, but a discovery of its character, I believe, 
prevented such a result. An attempt is made in it, by simplicity of style, 
minuteness of nautical descriptions, and circumstantiality of narration, to give 
it that air of truth which constitutes the principal attraction of Sir Edward 
Seaward's Narrative, and Robinson Crusoe ; but it has none of the pleasing 
interest of these tales ; it is as full of wonders as Munchausen, has as many 
atrocities as the Book of Pirates, and as liberal an array of paining and 
revolting horrors as ever was invented by Anne Radcliffe or George Walker. 
Thus far a tendency to extravagance had been the most striking infirmity of 
his genius. He had been more anxious to be intense than to be natural ; 
and some of his bizarreries had been mistaken for satire, and admired for that 
quality. Afterward he was more judicious, and if his outlines were incredi- 
ble it was commonly forgotten in the simplicity of his details and their 
cohesive cumulation. 

Near the end of the year 1838 he settled in Philadelphia, He had no very 
definite purposes, but trusted for support to the chances of success as a 
magazinist and newspaper correspondent. Mr. Burton, the comedian, had 
recently established the " Gentleman's Magazine," and of this he became a 
contributor, and in May, 1839, the chief editor, devoting to it, for ten dollars 
a week, two hours every day, which left him abundant time for more im- 
portant labors. In the same month he agreed to furnish such reviewals as he 
had written for the " Literary Messenger," for the " Literary Examiner," 
a new magazine at Pittsburgh. But his more congenial pursuit was tale 
writing, and he produced about this period some of his most remarkable and 
characteristic works in a department of imaginative composition in which he 
was henceforth alone and unapproachable. The " Fall of the House of 
Usher," and " Legeia," are the most interesting illustrations of his mental 
organization — his masterpieces in a peculiar vein of romantic creation. They 
have the unquestionable stamp of genius. The analyses of the growth of 
madness in one, and the thrilling revelations of the existence of a first wife in 
the person of a second, in the other, are made with consummate skill ; and 
the strange and solemn and fascinating beauty which informs the style and 

* The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, of Nantucket ; comprising the De- 
tails of a Mutiny and Atrocious Butchery on board the American Brig Grampus, on her 
way to the South Seas — with an Account of the Re-capture of the Vessel by the Sur- 
vivors ; their Shipwreck, and subsequent Horrible Sufferings from Famine ; their Deliv- 
erance by means of the British schooner Jane Gray ; the brief Cruise of this latter Vessel 
in the Antartic Ocean ; her Capture, and the Massacre of her Crew among a Group of 
Islands in the 84th parallel of southern latitude ; together with the incredible Adventures 
and Discoveries still further South, to which that distressing Calamity gave rise.— 1 vol. 
l2mo. pp. 198. New -York, Harper & Brothers. 1838. 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 



invests the circumstances of both, drugs the mind, and makes us forget the 
improbabilities of their general design. 

An awakened ambition and the healthful influence of a conviction that his 
works were appreciated, and that his fame was increasing, led him for a 
while to cheerful views of life, and to regular habits of conduct. He wrote 
to a friend, the author of " Edge Hill," in Richmond, that he had quite over- 
come " the seductive and dangerous besetment " by winch he had so often 
been prostrated, and to another friend that, incredible as it might seem, he 
had become a " model of temperance," and of " other virtues," which it had 
sometimes been difficult for him to practise. Before the close of the sum- 
mer, however, he relapsed into his former courses, and for weeks was regard- 
less of everything but a morbid and insatiable appetite for the means of 
intoxication. 

In the autumn he published all the prose stories he had then written, in 
two volumes, under the title of " Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque." 
The work was not saleable, perhaps because its contents were too familiar 
from recent separate publication in magazines ; and it was not so warmly 
praised, generally, as I think it should have been, though in point of style the 
pieces which it embraced are much less perfect than they were made subse- 
quently. 

He was with Mr. Burton until June, 1840 — more than a year. Mr. Burton 
appreciated his abilities and would gladly have continued the connexion ; but 
Poe was so unsteady of purpose and so unreliable that the actor was never 
sure when he left the city that his business would be cared for. On one oc- 
casion, returning after the regular day of publication, he found the number 
unfinished, and Poe incapable of duty. He prepared the necessary copy him- 
self, published the magazine, and was proceeding with arrangements for an- 
other month, when he received a letter from his assistant, of which the tone 
may be inferred from this answer : 

" I am sorry you have thought it necessary to send me such a letter. Your troubles 
have given a morbid tone to your feelings which it is your duly to discourage. I myself 
have been as severely handled by the world as you can possibly have been, but my suf- 
ferings have not tinged my mind with melancholy, nor jaundiced my views of society. 
You must rouse your energies, and if care assail you, conquer it. I will gladly overlook 
the past. I hope you will as easily fulfil your pledges for the future. We shall agree 
very well, though I cannot permit the magazine to be made a vehicle for that sort of 
severity which you think is so " successful with the mob." I am truly much less anxious 
about making a monthly "sensation" than I am upon the point of fairness. You must, 
my dear sir, get rid of your avowed ill-feelings toward your brother authors. You see I 
speak plainly: I cannot do otherwise upon such a subject. You say the people love 
havoc. I think they love justice. I think you yourself would not have written the arti 
cle on Dawes, in a more healthy state of mind. I am not trammelled by any vulgar con- 
sideration of expediency ; I would rather lose money than by such undue severity wound 
the feelings of a kind-hearted and honorable man. And I am satisfied that Dawes has 
something of the true fire in him. I regretted your word-catching spirit. But I wander 
from my design. I accept your proposition to recommence your interrupted avocations 
upon the Maga. Let us meet as if we had not exchanged letters. Use more exer- 
cise, write when feelings prompt, and be assured of my friendship. You will soon regain 
a healthy activity of mind, and laugh at your past vagaries." 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. xvii 

This letter was kind and judicious. It gives us a glimpse of Poe's theory 
of criticism, and displays the temper and principles of the literary comedian 
in an honorable light. Two or three months afterward Burton went out of 
town to fulfil a professional engagement, leaving material and directions for 
completing the next number of the magazine in four days. He was absent 
nearly a fortnight, and on returning he found that his printers in the mean- 
while had not received a fine of copy ; but that Poe had prepared the pros- 
pectus of a new monthly, and obtained transcripts of his subscription and 
account books, to be used in a scheme for supplanting him. He encountered 
his associate late in the evening at one of his accustomed haunts, and said, 
" Mr. Poe, I am astonished : Give me my manuscripts so that I can attend 
to the duties you have so shamefully neglected, and when you are sober we 
will settle." Poe interrupted him with " Who are you that presume to ad- 
dress me in this manner ? Burton, I am — the editor — of the Penn Magazine — 
and you are — hiccup — a fool." Of course this ended his relations with the 
" Gentleman's." 

In November, 1840, Burton's miscellany was merged in "The Casket," 
owned by Mr. George R. Graham, and the new series received the name of 
its proprietor, who engaged Poe in its editorship. His connexion with " Gra- 
ham's Magazine " lasted about a year and a half, and this was one of the most 
active and brilliant periods of his literary life. He wrote in it several of his 
finest tales and most trenchant criticisms, and challenged attention by his 
papers entitled " Autography," and those on cryptology and cyphers. In 
the first, adopting a suggestion of Lavater, he attempted the illustration of 
character from handwriting ; and in the second, he assumed that human in- 
genuity could construct no secret writing which human ingenuity could not 
resolve : a not very dangerous proposition, since it implied no capacity in him- 
self to discover every riddle of this kind that should be invented. He how- 
ever succeeded with several difficult cryptographs that were sent to him, and 
the direction of his mind to the subject led "to the composition of some of the 
tales of ratiocination which so largely increased his reputation. The infirmi- 
ties which induced his separation from Mr. White and from Mr. Burton at 
length compelled Mr. Graham to seek for another editor ; but Poe still re- 
mained in Philadelphia, engaged from time to time in various literary occu- 
pations, and in the vain effort to establish a journal of his own to be called 
" The Stylus." Although it requires considerable capital to carry on a month- 
ly of the description he proposed, I tliink it would not have been difficult, 
with his well-earned fame as a magazinist, for him to have found a compe- 
tent and suitable publisher, but for the unfortunate notoriety of his habits, 
and the failure in succession of three persons who had admired him for his 
genius and pitied him for his misfortunes, by every means that tact or friend- 
ship could suggest, to induce the consistency and steadiness of application 
indispensable to success in such pursuits. It was in the spring of 1848 — 
more than a year after his dissociation from Graham — that he wrote the 
story of u The Gold Bug," for which he was paid a prize of one hundred dol- 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 



lars. It has relation to Captain Kyd's treasure, and is one of the most re- 
markable illustrations of his ingenuity of construction and apparent subtlety 
of reasoning. The interest depends upon the solution of an intricate cypher 
In the autumn of 1844 Poe removed to New- York. 

It was while he resided in Philadelphia that I became acquainted with 
him. His manner, except during his fits of intoxication, was very quiet and 
gentlemanly ; he was usually dressed with simplicity and elegance ; and when 
once he sent for me to visit him, during a period of illness caused by protract- 
ed and anxious watching at the side of his sick wife, I was impressed by the 
singular neatness and the air of refinement in his home. It was in a small 
house, in one of the pleasant and silent neighborhoods far from the centre of 
the town, and though slightly and cheaply furnished, everything in it was so 
tasteful and so fitly disposed that it seemed altogether suitable for a man of 
genius. For this and for most of the comforts he enjoyed in his brightest as 
in his darkest years, he was chiefly indebted to his mother-in-law, who loved 
him with more than maternal devotion and constancy. 

He had now written his most acute criticisms and his most admirable tales. 
Of tales, besides those to which I have referred, he had produced " The De- 
scent into the Maelstrom," " The Premature Burial," " The Purloined Letter," 
" The Murders of the Rue Morgue," and its sequel, " The Mystery of Marie 
Roget." The scenes of the last three are in Paris, where the author's friend, 
the Chevalier Auguste Dupin, is supposed to reveal to him the curiosities of 
his experience and observation in matters of police. " The Mystery of Marie 
Roget" was first published in the autumn of 1842, before an extraordinary 
excitement, occasioned by the murder of a young girl named Mary Rogers, in 
the vicinity of New- York, had quite subsided, though several months after 
the tragedy. Under pretence of relating the fate of a Parisian grisette, Mr. 
Poe followed in minute detail the essential w r hile merely paralleling the ines- 
sential facts of the real murder. His object appears to have been to reinves- 
tigate the case and to settle his own conclusions as to the probable culprit. 
There is a great deal of hair-splitting in the' incidental discussions by Dupin, 
throughout all these stories, but it is made effective. Much of their popular- 
ity, as well as that of other tales of ratiocination by Poe, arose from their 
being in a new key. I do not mean to say that they are not ingenious ; but 
they have been thought more ingenious than they are, on account of their 
method and air of method. In " The Murders of the Rue Morgue," for in- 
stance, what ingenuity is displayed in unravelling a web which has been 
woven for the express purpose of unravelling ? The reader is made to con- 
found the ingenuity of the supposititious Dupin with that of the writer of the 
story. These works brought the name of Poe himself somewhat conspicu- 
ously before the law courts of Paris. The journal, La Commerce, gave a 
feuilleton in which " The Murders of the Rue Morgue " appeared in transla- 
tion. Afterward a writer for La Quotidienne served it for that paper under 
the title of " L'Orang-Otang." A third party accused La Quotidienne of 
plagiary from La Commerce, and in the course of the legal investigation 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 



which ensued, the feuilletoniste of La Commerce proved to the satisfaction 
of the tribunal that he had stolen the tale entirely from Mr. Poe,* whose 
merits were soon after canvassed in the " Revue des Deux Mondes" and whose 
best tales were upon this impulse translated by Mme. Isabelle Meunier for 
the Democratic Pacifique and other French gazettes. 

In New- York Poe entered upon a new sort of life. Heretofore, from the 
commencement of his literary career, he had resided in provincial towns. 
Now he was in a metropolis, and with a reputation which might have served 
as a passport to any society he could desire. For the first time he was re- 
ceived into circles capable of both the appreciation and the production of 
literature. He added to his fame soon after he came to the city by the pub- 
lication of that remarkable composition " The Raven," of which Mr. Willis has 
observed that in his opinion " it is the most effective single example of fugi- 
tive poetry ever published in this country, and is unsurpassed in English 
poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent 
sustaining of imaginative lift ;" and by that of one of the most extraordinary 
instances of the naturalness of detail — the verisimilitude of minute narrative — 
for which he was preeminently distinguished, his " Mesmeric Revelation," 
purporting to be the last conversation of a somnambule, held just before 
death with his magnetizer ; which was followed by the yet more striking ex- 
hibition of abilities in the same way, entitled " The Facts in the Case of M» 

* The controversy is wittily described in the following extract from a Parisian journal, 
L'Entr Acte, of the twentieth of October, 1846 : 

" Un grand journal accusait l'autre jour M. Old-Nick d'avoir vole un orang-outang. Cet 
interessant animal flanait dans le feuilleton de la Quotidienne, lorsque M. Old-Nick le 
vit, le trouva a son gout et s'en empara. Notre confrere avait sans doute besoin d'un 
groom. On sait que les Anglais ont depuis long-temps colonise les orangs-outangs, et les 
*ont instruits dans l'art de porter les lettres sur un plateau de vermeil, et de vernir les 
bottes. II paraitrait, toujours suivant le meme grand journal, que RJ. Old-Nick, apres 
avoir derobe cet orang-outang a la Quotidienne, l'aurait ensuite cede au Commerce, comme 
propriete a lui appartenant. Je sais que RI. Old-Nick est un garcon plein d'espiit et plein 
d'honneur, assez riche de son propre fonds pour ne pas s'approprier les orangs-outangs' 
des autres ; cette accusation me surprit. Apres tout, me dis-je, il y a eu des monomanies 
plus extraordinaires que celle-la ; le grand Bacon ne pouvait voir un baton de cire a 
cacheter sans se I'approprier : dans une conference avec RI. de RIetternich aux Tuileries, 
l'Empereur s'apercut que le diplomate autrichien glissait des pains a cacheter dans sa 
poche. RI. Old-Nick a une autre manie, il fait les orangs-outangs. Je m'attendais tou- 
jours a ce que la Quotidienn e jetat feu et flammes et demandat a grands cris son homme 
des bois. II faut vous dire que j'avais hi son histoire dans le Commerce, elle etait char- 
mante d'espritetde style, pleine de rapidite et de desinvolture ; la Quotidienne Vava.it 
egalement publiee, mais en trois feuilletons. L'orang-outang du Commerce n 'avait que 
nenf colonnes. II s'agissait done d'un autre quadrumane litteraire. Rla foi non ! e'etait 
le meme; seulement il n'appartenait ni a la Quotidienne, ni au Commerce. RI. Old-Nick 
l'avait einprunte a un romancier Americain qu'il est en train d'inventer dans la Revue 
des Deux-Mondes. Ce romancier s'appelle Poe : je ne dis pas le contraire. Voila done 
un ecrivain qui use du droit legitime d'arranger les nouvelles d'un romancier Americain 
qu'il a invente, et on l'accuse de plagiat, de vol au feuilleton ; on alarme ses amis en leur 
faisant croire que cet ecrivain est possede de la monomanie des orangs-outangs. Par la 
Courchamps ! voila qui me parait leger. M. Old-Nick a ecrit au journal en question une 
reponse pour retablir sa moralite, attaquee a l'endroit des orangs-outangs. Cet orang- 
outang a mis, ces jours derniers, toute la litterature en ernoi ; personne n'a cru un seul 
instant a l'accusation qu'on a essaye de faire peser sur RI. Old-Nick, d'autant plus qu'il 
avait pris soin d'indiqner luimeme la cage oii il avait pris son orang-outang. Ceci va 
fournir de nouvelles amies a la secte qui croit aux romanciers Americains. Le prejuge 
de l'existence de Cooper en prendra de nouvelles forces. En attendant que la vcrite se 
decouvre, nous sommes forces de convenir que ce Poe est un gaillard bien fin, bien 
spirituel, quand il est arrange par RI. Old-Nick. 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR, 



Valdemar," in which the subject is represented as having been mesmerized 
in articulo mortis. These pieces were reprinted throughout the literary and 
philosophical world, in nearly all languages, everywhere causing sharp and 
curious speculation, and where readers could be persuaded that they were 
fables, challenging a reluctant but genuine admiration. 

He had not been long in New- York before he was engaged by Mr. Willis 
and General Morris as critic and assistant editor of " The Mirror." He re- 
mained in this situation about six months, when he became associated with 
Mr. Briggs in the conduct of the "Broadway Journal," which in October, 
1845, passed entirely into his possession. He had now the long-sought but 
never before enjoyed absolute control of a literary gazette, and, with much 
friendly assistance, he maintained it long enough to show that whatever his 
genius, he had not the kind or degree of talent necessary to such a position. 
His chief critical writings in the " Broadway Journal," were a paper on Miss 
Barrett's Poems and a long discussion of the subject of plagiarism, with espe- 
cial reference to Mr. Longfellow. In March, 1845, he had given a lecture at 
the Society Library upon the American poets, composed, for the most part, 
of fragments of his previously published reviewals ; and in the autumn he ac- 
cepted an invitation to read a poem before the Boston Lyceum. A week 
after the event, he printed in the " Broadway Journal " the following account 
of it, in reply to a paragraph in one of the city papers, founded upon a state- 
ment in the Boston " Transcript." 

" Our excellent friend, Major Noah, has suffered himself to be cajoled by that most be- 
guiling of all beguiling little divinities, Miss Walter, of ' The Transcript.' We have 
been looking all over her article with the aid of a taper, to see if we could discover a 
single syllable of truth in it — and really blush to acknowledge that we cannot. The 
adorable creature has been telling a parcel of fibs about us, by way of revenge for some- 
thing that we did to Mr. Longfellow (who admires her very much) and for calling her 'a 
pretty little witch' into the bargain. The facts of the case seem to be these : We were 
invited to ' deliver' (stand and deliver) a poem before the Boston Lyceum. As a matter 
of course, we accepted the invitation. The audience was 'large and distinguished.' 
Mr. dishing* preceded us with a very capital discourse : he was much applauded. On 
arising, we were most cordially received. We occupied some fifteen minutes with an 
apology for not ' delivering,' as is usual in such cases, a didactic poem : a didactic poem, 
in our opinion, being precisely no poem at all. After some farther words — still of apology 
— for the 'indefinitiveness' and 'general imbecility' of what we had to offer— all so 
unworthy a Bostonian audience — we commenced, and, with many interruptions of ap- 
plause, concluded. Upon the whole the approbation was considerably more (the more 
the pity too) than that bestowed upon Mr. dishing. When we had made an end, the 
audience, of course, arose to depart ; and about one-tenth of them, probably, had really 
departed, when Mr. Coffin, one of the managing committee, arrested those who remained, 
by the announcement that we had been requested to deliver 'The Raven.' We deliv- 
ered 'The Raven' forthwith — (without taking a receipt) — were very cordially applaud- 
ed again— and this was the end of it— with the exception of the sad tale invented to suit 
her own purposes, by that amiable little enemy of ours, Miss Walter. We shall never 
call a woman 'a pretty little witch' again, as long as we live. 

" We like Boston. We were born there — and perhaps it is just as well not to mention 
that we are heartily ashamed of the fact. The Bostonians are very well in their way. 
Their hotels are bad. Their pumpkin pies are delicious. Their poetry is not so good. 

* Hon. Caleb Cushing, then recently returned from his mission to China. 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. xxi 

Their common is no common thing— and the duck-pond might answer— if its answer could 
be heard for the frogs. But with all these good qualities the Bostonians have no soul. 
They have always evinced towards us, individually, the basest ingratitude for the services 
we rendered them in enlightening them about the originality of Mr. Longfellow. When 
we accepted, therefore, an invitation to 'deliver' a poem in Boston — we accepted it 
simply and solely, because we had a curiosity to know how it felt to be publicly hissed — 
and because we wished to see what effect we could produce by a neat little impromptu 
speech in reply. Perhaps, however, we overrated our own importance, or the Bostonian 
want of common civility — which is not quite so manifest as one or two of their editors 
would wish the public to believe. We assure Major Noah that he is wrong. The Bosto- 
nians are well-bred — as very dull persons very generally are. Still, with their vile ingrati- 
tude staring us in the eyes, it could scarcely be supposed that we would put ourselves to the 
trouble of composing for the Bostonians anything in the shape of an original poem. We 
did not. We had a poem (of about 500 lines) lying by us — one quite as good as new — 
one, at all events, that we considered would answer sufficiently well for an audience of 
Transcendentalists. That we gave them — it was the best that we had — for the price — 
and it did answer remarkably well. Its name was not ' The Messenger-Star ' — who but 
Miss Walter would ever think of so delicious a little bit of invention as that? We had 
no name for it at all. The poem is what is occasionally called a 'juvenile poem' — but 
the fact is, it is anything but juvenile now, for we wrote it, printed it, and published it, in 
book form, before we had fairly completed our tenth year. We read it verbatim, from a 
copy now in our possession, and which we shall be happy to show at any moment to any 
of our inquisitive friends. We do not, ourselves, think the poem a remarkably good one : 
— it is not sufficiently transcendental. Still it did well enough for the Boston audience — 
who evinced characteristic discrimination in understanding, and especially applauding, all 
those knotty passages which we ourselves have not yet been able to understand. 

"As regards the anger of the ' Boston Times ' and one or two other absurdities — as 
regards, we say, the wrath of Achilles — we incurred it — or rather its manifestation — by 
letting some of our cat out of the bag a few hours sooner than we had intended. Over 
a bottle of champagne, that night, we confessed to Messrs. Cushing, Whipple, Hudson, 
Fields, and a few other natives who swear not altogether by the frog-pond — we confessed, 
we say, the soft impeachment of the hoax. Et Mac Mae irae. We should have waited 
a couple of days." 

It is scarcely necessary to suggest that this must have been written before 
he had quite recovered from the long intoxication which maddened him at 
the time to which it refers — that he was not born in Boston, that the poem 
was not published in Ins tenth year, and that the " hoax " was all an after- 
thought. Two weeks later he renewed the discussion of the subject in the 
" Broadway Journal," commenting as follows upon allusions to it by other 
parties : 

" Were the question demanded of us— 'What is the most exquisite of sublunary plea 
sures?' we should reply, without hesitation, the making a fuss, or, in the classical words 
of a western friend, the ' kicking up a bobbery.' Never was a ' bobbery ' more de- 
lightful than which we have just succeeded in ' kicking up ' all around about Boston 
Common. We never saw the Frogpondians so lively in our lives. They seem abso- 
lutely to be upon the point of waking up. In about nine days the puppies may get 
open their eyes. That is to say they may get open their eyes to certain facts which have 
long been obvious to all the world except themselves— the facts that there exist other 
cities than Boston— other men of letters than Professor Longfellow — other vehicles of 
literary information than the 'Down-East Review.' 

"We had tact enough not to be ' taken in and done for ' by the Bostonians. Timeo 
Danaos et dona ferentes — {for timeo substitute contemno or turn-tip-our-nosed). We 
knew very well that among a certain clique of the Frogpondians, there existed a prede- 
termination to abuse us under any circumstances. We knew that, write what we would, 



xxii MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 



they would swear it to be worthless. We knew that were we to compose for them a 
4 Paradise Lost,' they would pronounce it an indifferent poem. It would have been very 
weak in us, then, to put ourselves to the trouble of atteznpting to please these people. 
We preferred pleasing ourselves. We read before them a 'juvenile ' — a very 'juvenile' 
poem — and thus the Frogpondians were had — were delivered up to the enemy bound hand 
and foot. Never were a set of people more completely demolished. They have blustered 
and flustered — but what have they done or said that has not made them more thoroughly 
ridiculous 1— what, in the name of Momus, is it possible for them to do or to say ? We 
1 delivered ' them the ' juvenile poem ' and they received it with applause. This is 
accounted for by the fact that the clique (contemptible in numbers as in everything else) 
were overruled by the rest of the assembly. These malignants did not dare to interrupt 
by their preconcerted hisses, the respectful and profound attention of the majority. We 
have been told, indeed, that as many as three or four of the personal friends of the little 
old lady entitled Miss Walter, did actually leave the hall during the recitation— but, 
upon the whole, this was the very best thing they could do. We have been told this, 
we say— we did not see them take their departure .—the fact is they belong to a class of 
people that we make it a point never to see. The poem being thus well received, in spite 
of this ridiculous little cabal — the next thing to be done was to abuse it in the papers. 
Here, they imagined, they were sure of their game. But what have they accomplished? 
The poem, they say, is bad. We admit it. We insisted upon this fact in our prefatory 
remarks, and we insist upon it now, over and over again. It is bad — it is wretched — and 
what then ? We wrote it at ten years of age — had it been worth even a pumpkin-pie 
undoubtedly we should not have ' delivered ' it to them. To demonstrate its utter worth- 
lessness, ' The Boston Star ' has copied the poem in full, with two or three columns of 
criticism (we suppose) by way of explaining that we should have been hanged for its 
perpetration. There is no doubt of it whatever — we should. ' The Star,' however, (a dull 
luminary) has done us more honor than it intended ; it has copied our third edition of the 
poem, revised and improved. We considered this too good for the occasion by one-half, 
and so ' delivered ' the first edition with all its imperfections on its head. It is the first — 
the original edition — the delivered edition — which we now republish in our collection of 
Poems." 

When he accepted the invitation of the Lyceum he intended to write an 
original poem, upon a subject which he said had haunted his imagination for 
years ; but cares, anxieties, and feebleness of will, prevented ; and a week before 
the appointed night he wrote to a friend, imploring assistance. " You compose 
with such astonishing facility," he urged in his letter, " that you can easily 
furnish me, quite soon enough, a poem that shall be equal to my reputation. 
For the love of God I beseech you to help me in this extremity." The lady 
wrote lum kindly, advising him judiciously, but promising to attempt the 
fulfilment of his wishes. She was, however, an invalid, and so failed.* At 
last, instead of pleading illness himself, as he had previously done on a sim-. 
ilar occasion, he determined to read his poem of " Al Aaraaf," the original 
publication of which, in 1829, has already been stated. 

The last number of the " Broadway Journal " was published on the third 
of January, 1846, and Poe soon after commenced the series of papers enti- 
tled "The Literati of New- York City," which were published in "The 
Lady's Book " in six numbers, from May to October. Their spirit, boldness, 
and occasional causticity, caused them to be much talked about, and three 

* This lady was the late Mrs. Osgood, and a fragment of what she wrote under these 
circumstances may be found in the last edition of her works under the title of " Lulin,or 
the Diamond Fay." 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 



editions were necessary to supply the demand for some numbers of the maga- 
zine containing them. They however led to a disgraceful quarrel, and this 
to their premature conclusion. Dr. Thomas Dunn English, who had at one 
time sustained the most intimate relations with Poe, chose to evince his re- 
sentment of the critic's unfairness by the publication of a card in which he 
painted strongly the infirmities of Poe's life and character, and alleged that 
he had on several occasions inflicted upon him personal chastisement. This 
was not a wise confession, for a gentleman never appeals to his physical abili- 
ties except for defence. But the entire publication, even if every word of it 
were true, was unworthy of Dr. English, unnecessary, and not called for by 
Poe's article, though that, as every one acquainted with the parties might 
have seen, was entirely false in what purported to be its facts. The state- 
ment of Dr. English appeared in the New- York " Mirror " of the twenty-third 
of June, and on the twenty-seventh Mr. Poe sent to Mr. Godey for publica- 
tion in the " Lady's Book " his rejoinder, which would have made about five 
of the large pages of that miscellany. Mr. Godey very properly declined to 
print it, and observed, in the communication of his decision, that the tone of 
the article was regarded as unsuitable for his work and as altogether wrong. 
In compliance with the author's wishes, however, he had caused its appear- 
ance in a daily paper. Poe then wrote to him : 

" The man or men who told you that there was anything wrong in the tone of my reply 
were either my enemies, or your enemies, or asses. When you see them, tell them so, 
from me. I have never written an article upon which I more confidently depend for lite- 
rary reputation than that Reply. Its merit lay in its being precisely adapted to its pur- 
pose. In this city I have had upon it the favorable judgments of the best men. All the 
error about it was yours. You should have done as I requested— published it in the 
' Book.' It is of no use to conceive a plan if you have to depend upon another for its 
execution." 

Nevertheless, I agree with Mr. Godey. Poe's article was as bad as that 
of English. Yet a part of one of its paragraphs is interesting, and it is here 
transcribed : 

— " Let me not permit any profundity of disgust to induce, even for an instant, a viola- 
tion of the dignity of truth. What is not false, amid the scurrility of this man's state- 
ments, it is not in my nature to brand as false, although oozing from the filthy lips of 
which a lie is the only natural language. The errors and frailties which I deplore, it can- 
not at least be asserted that I have been the coward to deny. Never, even, have I made 
attempt at extenuating a weakness which is (or, by the blessing of God, toas) a calamity, 
although those who did not know me intimately had little reason to regard it otherwise 
than as a crime. For, indeed, had my pride, or that of my family permitted, there was 
much — very much — there was everything — to be offered in extenuation. Perhaps, even, 
there was an epoch at which it might not have been wrong in me to hint— what by the 
testimony of Dr. Francis and other medical men I might have demonstrated, had the pub- 
lic, indeed, cared for the demonstration — that the irregularities so profoundly lamented 
were the effect of a terrible evil rather than its cause.— And now let me thank God that 
in redemption from the physical ill I have forever got rid of the moral." 

Dr. Francis never gave any such testimony. On one occasion Poe borrow- 
ed fifty dollars from a distinguished litejjary woman of South Carolina, pro- 
mising to return it in a few days, and when he failed to do so, and was asked 
for a written acknowledgment of the debt that might be exhibited to the 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 



husband of the friend who had thus served him, he denied all knowledge of 
it, and threatened to exliibit a correspondence which he said would make 
the woman infamous, if she said any more on the subject. Of course there 
had never been any such correspondence, but when Poe heard that a brother 
of the slandered party was in quest of him for the purpose of taking the 
satisfaction supposed to be due in such cases, he sent for Dr. Francis and 
induced him to carry to the gentleman his retraction and apology, with a 
statement which seemed true enough at the moment, that Poe was " out of 
his head." It is an ungracious duty to describe such conduct in a person of 
Poe's unquestionable genius and capacities of greatness, but those who are 
familiar with the career of this extraordinaxy creature can recall but too 
many similar anecdotes ; and as to his intemperance, they perfectly well un- 
derstand that its pathology was like that of ninety-nine of every hundred 
cases of the disease. 

As the autumn of 1846 wore on Poe's habits of frequent intoxication and his 
inattention to the means of support reduced him to much more than common 
destitution. He was now living at Fordham, several miles from the city, so 
that his necessities were not generally known even among his acquaintances ; 
but when the dangerous illness of his wife was added to his misfortunes, and 
his dissipation and accumulated causes of anxiety had prostrated all his own 
energies, the subject was introduced into the journals. The "Express" 
said : 

" We regret to learn that Edgar A. Poe and his wife are both dangerously ill with the 
consumption, and that the hand of misfortune lies heavy upon their temporal affairs. We 
are sorry to mention the fact that they are so far reduced as to be barely able to obtain 
the necessaries of life. This is indeed a hard lot, and we hope that the friends and ad- 
mirers of Mr. Poe will come promptly to his assistance in his bitterest hour of need." 

Mr. "Willis, in an article in the " Home Journal " suggesting a hospital for 
disabled laborers with the brain, said — 

" The feeling we have long entertained on this subject, has been freshened by a recent 
paragraph in the ' Express,' announcing that Mr. Edgar A. Poe and his wife were both 
dangerously ill, and suffering for want of the common necessaries of life. Here is one of 
the finest scholars, one of the most original men of genius, and one of the most industri- 
ous of the literary profession of our country, whose temporary suspension of labor, from 
bodily illness, drops him immediately to a level with the common objects of public charity. 
There was no intermediate stopping-place — no respectful shelter where, with the delicacy 
due to genius and culture, he might secure aid, unadvertised, till, with returning health, 
he could resume his labors and his unmodified sense of independence. He must either 
apply to individual friends — (a resource to which death is sometimes almost preferable) — 
or suffer down to the level where Charity receives claimants, but where Rags and Hu- 
miliation are the only recognised Ushers to her presence. Is this right? Should there 
not be, in all highly civilized communities, an Institution designed expressly for educated 
and refined objects of chanty— a hospital, a retreat, a home of seclusion and comfort, the 
sufficient claims to which would be such susceptibilities as are violated by the above 
mentioned appeal in a daily newspaper." 

The entire article from which this paragraph is taken, was an ingenious 
apology for Mr. Poe's infirmities ; but it was conceived and executed in a 
generous spirit, and it had a quick effect in various contributions, winch 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. xxv 



relieved the poet from pecuniary embarrassments. The next week he pub- 
lished the following letter : 

" My Dear Willis .—The paragraph which has been put in circulation respecting my 
wife's illness, my own, my poverty, etc., is now lying before me ; together with the beauti- 
ful lines by Mrs. Locke and those by Mrs. , to which the paragraph has given rise, as 

well as your kind and manly comments in* The Home Journal.' The motive of the 
paragraph I leave to the conscience of him or her who wrote it or suggested it. Since the 
thing is done, however, and since the concerns of my family are thus pitilessly thrust 
before the public, I perceive no mode of escape from a public statement of what is true 
and what erroneous in the report alluded to. That my wife is ill, then, is true ; and you 
may imagine with what feelings I add that this illness, hopeless from the first, has been 
heightened and precipitated by her reception at two different periods, of anonymous letters, 
— one enclosing the paragraph now in question ; the other, those published calumnies of 
Messrs. , for which I yet hope to find redress in a court of justice. 

" Of the facts, that I myself have been long and dangerously ill, and that my illness 
has been a well understood thing among my brethren of the press, the best evidence is 
afforded by the innumerable paragraphs of personal and of literary abuse with which I 
have been latterly assailed. This matter, however, will remedy itself. At the very first 
blush of my new prosperity, the gentlemen who toadied me in the old, will recollect 
themselves and toady me again. You, who know me, will comprehend that I speak of 
these things only as having served, in a measure, to lighten the gloom of unhappiness, 
by a gentle and not unpleasant sentiment of mingled pity, merriment and contempt. That, 
as the inevitable consequence of so long an illness, I have been in want of money, it 
would be folly in me to deny— but that 1 have ever materially suffered from privation, be- 
yond the extent of my capacity for suffering, is not altogether true. That I am ' without 
friends' is a gross calumny, which I am sure you never could have believed, and which a 
thousand noble-hearted men would have good right never to forgive me for permitting to 
pass unnoticed and undented. Even in the city of New York I could have no difficulty 
in naming a hundred persons, to each of whom — when the hour for speaking had 
arrived — I could and would have applied for aid with unbounded confidence, and with ab- 
solutely no sense of humiliation. I do not think, my dear Willis, that there is any need of 
my saying more. I am getting better, and may add — if it be any comfort to my enemies 
— that I have little fear of getting worse. The truth is, I have a great deal to do ; and 
I have made up my mind not to die till it is done. Sincerely yours, 

" December 30th, 1846. Edgar A. Pok." 

This was written for effect. He had not been ill a great while, nor danger- 
ously at all ; there was no literary or personal abuse of him in the journals ; 
and his friends in town had been applied to ibr money until their patience 
was nearly exhausted. His wife, however, was very sick, and an a few weeks 
she died. In a letter to a lady in Massachusetts, who, upon the appearance 
of the newspaper articles above quoted, had sent him money and expressions 
of sympathy, he wrote, under date of March 10, 1847 : 

" In answering your kind letter permit me in the very first place to absolve myself from 
a suspicion which, under the circumstances, you could scarcely have failed to entertain — 
a suspicion of discourtesy toward yourself, in not having more promptly replied to you.. . 
I could not help fearing that should you see my letter to Mr. Willis — in which a natural 
pride, which I feel you could not blame, impelled me to shrink from public charity, even 
at the cost of truth, in denying those necessities which were but too real — I could not help 
fearing that, should you see this letter, you would yourself feel pained at having caused 
me pain — at having been the means of giving further publicity to an unfounded report — 
at all events to the report of a wretchedness which Ihad thought it prudent (since the 
world regards wretchedness as a crime) so publicly to disavow. In a word, venturing to 
judge your noble nature -by my own, 1 felt grieved lest my published denial might cause 

Vol. III.— B 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 



you to regret what you had done ; and my first impulse was to write you, and assure you> 
even at the risk of doing so too warmly, of the sweet emotion, made up of respect and 
gratitude alone, with which my heart was filled to overflowing. While I was hesitating, 
however, in regard to th^3 propriety of this step, I was overwhelmed by a sorrow so poig- 
nant as to deprive me for several weeks of all power of thought or action. Your letter, 
now lying before me, tells me that I had not been mistaken in your nature, and that I 

should not have hesitated to address you ; but believe me, my dear Mrs. L , that I am 

already ceasing to regard those difficulties or misfortunes which have led me to even this 
partial correspondence with yourself." 

For nearly a year Mr. Poe was not often before the public, but he was as 
industrious, perhaps, as he had been at any time, and early in 1848 adver- 
tisement was made of his intention to deliver several lectures, with a view 
to obtain an amount of money sufficient to establish his so-long-contemplated 
monthly magazine. His first lecture — and only one at this period — was 
given at the Society Library, in New- York, on the ninth of February, and 
was upon the Cosmogony of the Universe ; it was attended by an eminently 
intellectual auditory, and the reading of it occupied about two hours and a 
half; it was what he afterwards published under the title of "Eureka, a 
Prose Poem." 

To the composition of this work he brought his subtlest and highest 
capacities, in their most perfect development. Denying that the arcana of 
the universe can be explored by induction, but informing his imagination 
with the various results of science, he entered with unhesitating boldness, 
though with no guide but the divinest instinct, — that, sense of beauty, in 
which our great Edwards recognises the flowering of all truth — into the sea 
of speculation, and there built up of according laws and their phenomena, 
as under the influence of a scientific inspiration, his theory of Nature. I 
will not attempt the difficult task of condensing his propositions ; to be 
apprehended they must be studied in his own terse and simple language ; 
but in this we have a summary of that which he regards as fundamental : 
" The law which we call Gravity,'' he says, ' : exists on account of matter 
having been radiated, at its origin, atomically, into a, limited sphere of space, 
from one, individual, unconditional, irrelative/ and absolute Particle Proper, 
by the sole process in which it was possible to satisfy, at the same time, the 
two conditions, radiation and equable distribution throughout the sphere — 
that is to say, by a force varying in direct proportion with the squares of 
the distances between the radiated atoms, respectively, and the particular 
centre of radiation." 

Poe was thoroughly persuaded that he had discovered the great secret ; 
that the propositions of " Eureka " were true ; and he was wont to talk of 
the subject with a sublime and electrical enthusiasm which they cannot have 
forgotten who were familiar with him at the period of its publication. He 
felt that an author known solely by his adventures in the lighter literature, 
throwing down the gauntlet to professors of science, could not expect abso- 
lute fairness, and he had no hope but in discussions led by wisdom and 
candor. Meeting me, he said, " Have you read ' Eureka V " I answered 
" Not yet : I have just glanced at the notice of it by Willis, who thinks it 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 



contains no more fact than fantasy, and I am sorry to see — sorry if it be 
t rue — suggests that it corresponds in tone with that gathering of sham and 
obsolete hypotheses addressed to fanciful tyros, the ' Vestiges of Creation ;' 
and our good and really wise friend Bush, whom you will admit to be of 
all the professors, in temper one of the most habitually just, thinks that 
while you may have guessed very shrewdly, it would not be difficult to 
suggest many difficulties in the way of your doctrine." " It is by no means 
ingenuous," he replied, " to hint that there are such difficulties, and yet to 
leave them unsuggested. I challenge the investigation of every point in 
the book. I deny that there are any difficulties which I have not met and 
overthrown. Injustice is done me by the application of this word 'guess :'. I 
have assumed nothing and proved all." In his preface he wrote : " To 
the few who love me and whom I love ; to those who feel rather than to 
those who think ; to the dreamers and those who put faith in dreams as in 
the only realities — I offer this book of truths, not in the character of Truth- 
Teller, but for the beauty that abounds in its truth : constituting it true. 
To these I present the composition as an Art-Product alone : — let us say as a 
Romance ; or, if it be not urging too lofty a claim, as a Poem. What I 
here propound is true : therefore it cannot die : or if by any means it be 
now trodden down so that it die, it will rise again to the life everlasting." 

When I read " Eureka " I could not help but think it immeasurably 
superior as an illustration of genius to the " Vestiges of Creation ;" and as 
I admired the poem, (except the miserable attempt at humor in what pur- 
ports to be a letter found in a bottle floating on the Mare tenebrarum,) so I 
regretted its pantheism, which is not necessary to its main design. To some 
of the objections to his work he made this answer in a letter to Mr. C. F. 
Hoffman, then editor of the " Literary World :" 

" Dear Sir :— In your paper of July 29, I find some comments on " Eureka," a late 
book of my own ; and I know you too well to suppose, for a moment, that you will refuse 
me the privilege of a few words in reply. I feel, even, that I might safely claim, from 
Mr. Hoffman, the right, which every author has, of replying to his critic tone for tone— 
that is to say, of answering your correspondent, flippancy by flippancy and sneer by sneer 
—but, in the first place, I do not wish to disgrace the " World ;" and, in the second, I feel 
that I never should be done sneering, in the present instance, were I once to begin. La- 
martine blames Voltaire for the use which he made of (ruse) misrepresentation, in his 
attacks on the priesthood; but our young students of Theology do not seem to be aware 
that in defence, or what they fancy to be defence, of Christianity, there is anything wrong 
in such gentlemanly peccadillos as the deliberate perversion of an author's text — to say 
nothing of the minor indecora of reviewing a book without reading it and without having 
the faintest suspicion of what it is about. 

"You will understand that it is merely the misrepresentations of the critique in ques- 
tion to which I claim the privilege of reply : — the mere opinions of the writer can be of 
no consequence to me — and I should imagine of very little to himself— that is to say if he 
knows himself, personally, as well as /have the honor of knowing hirti. The first mis- 
representation is contained in this sentence : — ' This letter is a keen burlesque on the 
Aristotelian or Baconian methods of ascertaining Truth, both of which the writer ridi- 
cules and despises, and pours forth his rhapsodical ecstasies in a glorification of the third 
mode — the noble art of guessing." 1 What I really say is this : — That there is no absolute 
certainty either in the Aristotelian or Baconian process — that, for this reason, neither 



xxviii MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 

Philosophy is so profound as it fancies itself— and that neither has a right to sneer at that 
seemingly imaginative process called Intuition (by which the great Kepler attained his 
laws ;) since ' Intuition,' after all, ' is but the conviction arising from those inductions or 
deductions of which the processes are so shadowy as to escape our consciousness, elude 
our reason or defy our capacity of expression.' The second misrepresentation runs thus : 
— 'The developments of electricity and the formation of stars and suns, luminous and 
non-luminous, moons and planets, with their rings, &c, is deduced, very much accord- 
ing to the nebular theory of Laplace, from the principle propounded above.' Now the 
impression intended to be made here upon the reader's mind, by the ' Student of Theol- 
ogy,' is, evidently, that my theory may all be very well in its way, but that it is nothing 
but Laplace over again, with some modifications that he (the Student of Theology) can- 
not regard as at all important. I have only to say that no gentleman can accuse me of 
the disingenuousness here implied ; inasmuch as, having proceeded with my theory up 
to that point at which Laplace's theory meets it, I then give Laplace's theory in full, 
with the expression of my firm conviction of its absolute truth at all points. The ground 
covered by the great French astronomer compares with that covered by my theory, as a 
bubble compares with the ocean on which it floats ; nor has he the slightest allusion to 
the ' principle propounded above,' the principle of Unity being the source of all things— 
the principle of Gravity being merely the Reaction of the Divine Act which irradiated all 
things from Unity. In fact, no point of my theory has been even so much as alluded to 
by Laplace. I have not considered it necessary, here, to speak of the astronomical know- 
ledge displayed in the ' stars and suns ' of the Student of Theology, nor to hint that it 
would be better grammar to say that ' development and formation' are, than that develop- 
ment and formation is. The third misrepresentation lies in a foot-note, where the critic 
says : — ' Further than this, Mr. Poe's claim that he can account for the existence of all 
organized beings — man included — merely from those principles on which the origin and 
present appearance of suns and worlds are explained, must be set down as mere bald 
assertion, without a particle of evidence. In other words we should term it arrant 
fudge.'' The perversion at this point is involved in a wilful misapplication of the word 
* principles.' I say ' wilful ;' because, at page 63, I am particularly careful to distinguish 
between the principles proper, Attraction and Repulsion, and those merely resultant sub- 
principles which control the universe in detail. To these sub-principles, swayed by the 
immediate spiritual influence of Deity, I leave, without examination, all that which the 
Student of Theology so roundly asserts I account for on the principles which account for 
the constitution of suns, &c. 

" In the third column of his ' review ' the critic says :— ' He asserts that each soul is 
its own God— its own Creator.' What I do assert is, that ' each soul is, in part, its own 
God— its own Creator.' Just below, the critic says :— ' After all these contradictory pro- 
poundings concerning God we would remind him of what he lays down on page 28 — 'of 
this Godhead in itself he alone is not imbecile — he alone is not impious who propounds 
nothing. A man who thus conclusively convicts himself of imbecility and impiety needs 
no further refutation.' Now the sentence, as I wrote it, and as I find it printed on that 
very page which the critic refers to and which must have been lying before him while he 
quoted my words, runs thus : — ' Of this Godhead, in itself, he alone is not imbecile, &c, 
who propounds nothing.' By the italics, as the critic well knew, I design to distinguish 
between the two possibilities — that of a knowledge of God through his works and that 
of a knowledge of Him in his essejitial nature. The Godhead, in itself, is distinguished 
from the Godhead observed in its effects. But our critic is zealous. Moreover, being a 
divine, he is honest— ingenuous. It is his duty to pervert my meaning by omitting my 
italics— just as, in the sentence previously quoted, it was his Christian duty to falsify my 
argument by leaving out the two words, ' in part,' upon which turns the whole force- 
indeed the whole intelligibility of my proposition. 

"Were these ' misrepresentations' (is that the name for them ?) made for any less 
serious a purpose than that of branding my book as 'impious ' and myself as a 'pan- 
theist,' a ' polytheist,' a Pagan, or a God knows what (and indeed I care very little so it 
be not a ' Student of Theology,') I would have permitted their dishonesty to pass unuo- 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 



ticed, through pure contempt for the boyishness — for the turn down- shirt-collar-ness of 
their tone : — but, as it is, you will pardon me, Mr. Editor, that I have been compelled to 
expose a 'critic' who, courageously preserving his own anonymosity, takes advantage of 
my absence from the city to misrepresent, and thus villify me, by name. 

"Fordham, September 20, 1848." "Edgar A. Pok." 

From this time Poe did not write much ; he had quarrelled with the con- 
ductors of the chief magazines for which he had previously written, and they 
no longer sought his assistance. In a letter to a friend, he laments the im- 
probabilities of an income from literary labor, saying : 

" I have represented to you as merely an ambitious simpleton, anxious to get into 

society with the reputation of conducting a magazine which somebody behind the cur- 
tain always prevents him from quite damning with his stupidity ; he is a knave and a 

beast. I cannot write any more for the Milliner's Book, where T n prints his feeble 

and very quietly made dilutions of other people's reviews : and you know that can 

afford to pay but little, though I am glad to do anything for a good fellow like . In 

this emergency I sell articles to the vulgar and trashy , for $5 a piece. 

I enclose my last, cut out, lest you should see by my sending the paper in what company 
I am forced to appear." » 

His name was now frequently associated with that of one of the most 
brilliant women of New England, and it was publicly announced that they 
were to be married. He had first seen her on his way from Boston, when he 
visited that city to deliver a poem before the Lyceum there. Restless, near 
the midnight, he wandered from his hotel near where she lived, until he saw 
her walking in a garden. He related the incident afterward in one of his 
most exquisite poems, worthy of himself, of her, and of the most exalted 
passion. • 

" I saw thee once — once only — years ago ; Were seen no more : the very roses' odors 

I must not say hmc many — but not many. Died in the arms of the adoring airs. 

It was a July midnight : and from out All — all expired save thee — save less than thou : 
A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring, Save only the divine light in thine eyes — 

Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven, Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes. 

There fell a silvery-silken veil of light, I saw but them— they were the world to me. 

With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber, I saw but them — saw only them for hours — 

Upon the upturn'd faces of a thousand Saw only them until the moon went down. 

Roses that grew in an enchanted garden, What wild heart-histories seemed to lie enwrilten 

Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe — Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres '. 

Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses How dark a wo ! yet how sublime a hope ! 

That gave out, in return for the love-light, How silently serene a sea of pride 1 

Their odorous souLs in an ecstatic death — How daring an ambition ! yet how deep — 

Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses How fathomless a capacity for love! 
That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted " But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight 

By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence. Into a western couch of thunder-cloud; 

"" Clad all in "white, upon a violet bank And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees 

I saw thee half reclining; while the moon Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained. 

Fell on the upturn'd faces of the roses, They would not'go — they never yet have gone. 

And on thine own, upturn'd — alas, in sorrow! Lighting my lonely pathway home that night, 

" Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight — They have not left me (as my hopes have) since. 

Was it not Fate, (whose name is also* Sorrow,) They follow me — they lead me through the years. 

That bade me pause before that garden-gate, They are my ministers — yet I their slave. 



To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses! Their office is to illumine and enkindle- 
No footstep stirred ; the hated world all slept, My duty, to be saved by their bright light, 
Save only thee and me. (Oh, Heaven! — oh, God! And purified in their electric fire, 
How my heart beats in coupling those two words !) And sanctified in their elysian fire. 
Save only thee and me. I paused — I looked— They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope,) 
And in an instant ail things disappeared. And are far up in Heaven — the stars I kneel to 
(Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!) In the sad, silent watches of my night ; 
The pearly lustre of the moon went out : While even in the meridian glare of day 
The mossy banks and the meandering paths, I see them still — two sweetly scintillant 
The happy flowers and the repining trees, Venuses, unextinguished by the sun !" 

They were not married, and the breaking of the engagement affords a 
striking illustration of his character. He said to an acquaintance in New- 
York, who congratulated with him upon the prospect of his union with a 
person of so much genius and so many virtues — " It is a mistake : I am not 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 



going to be married." " Why, Mr. Poe, I understand that the banns have 
been published." " I cannot help what you have heard, my dear Madam : but 
mark me, I shall not many her." He left town the same evening, and the 
next day was reeling through the streets of the city which was the lady's 
home, and in the evening — that should have been the evening before the 
bridal — in his drunkenness he committed at her house such outrages as made 
necessary a summons of the police. Here was no insanity leading to indul- 
gence : he went from New- York with a determination thus to induce an end- 
ing of the engagement ; and he succeeded. 

Sometime in August, 1849, Mr. Poe left New- York for Virginia. In Phila- 
delphia he encountered persons who had been his associates in dissipations 
while he lived there, and for several days he abandoned himself entirely to 
the control of his worst appetites. When his money was all spent, and the 
disorder of his dress evinced the extremity of his recent intoxication, he asked 
in charity means for the prosecution of his journey to Richmond. There, 
after a few days, he joined a temperance society, and his conduct showed 
the earnestness of his determination to reform his life. He delivered in some 
of the principal towns of Virginia two lectures, which were well attended, 
and renewing his acquaintance with a lady whom he had known in his youth, 
he was engaged to marry her, and wrote to his friends that he should pass 
the remainder of his days among the scenes endeared by all his pleasantest 
recollections of youth. 

On Thursday, the fourth of October, he set out for New- York, to fulfil a lite- 
rary engagement, and to prepare for his marriage. Arriving in Baltimore he 
gave his trunk to a porter, with directions to convey it to the cars which were 
to leave in an hour or two for Philadelphia, and went into a tavern to obtain 
some refreshment. Here he met acquaintances who invited him to drink ; 
all his resolutions and duties were soon forgotten ; in a few hours he was in 
such a state as is commonly induced only by long-continued intoxication ; af- 
ter a night of insanity and exposure, he was carried to a hospital ; and there, 
on the evening of Sunday, the seventh of October, 1849, he died, at the age 
of thirty-eight years. 

It is a melancholy history. No author of as much genius had ever in this 
country as much unhappiness ; but Poe's unhappiness was in an unusual 
degree the result of infirmities of nature, or of voluntary faults in conduct. 
A writer who evidently knew him well, and who comes before us in the 
"Southern Literary Messenger" as his defender, is "compelled to admit 
that the blemishes in his life were effects of character rather than of circum- 
stances."* How this character might have been modified by a judicious 
education of all his faculties I leave for the decision of others, but it will be 
evident to those who read this biography that the unchecked freedom of his 
earlier years was as unwise as its results were unfortunate. 

It is contended that the higher intelligences, in the scrutiny to which they 
appeal, are not to be judged by the common laws ; but I apprehend that 
* Southern Literary Messenger, March, 1850, p. 179. 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 



this doctrine, as it is likely to be understood, is entirely wrong. All men 
are amenable to the same principles, to the extent of the parallelism of these 
principles with their experience ; and the line of duty becomes only more 
severe as it extends into the clearer atmosphere of truth and beauty which 
is the life of genius. De mortuis nil nisi bonum is a common and an hon- 
orable sentiment, but its proper application would lead to the suppression 
of the histories of half of the most conspicuous of mankind ; in this case it is 
impossible on account of the notoriety of Mr. Poe's faults ; and it would be 
unjust to the living against whom his hands were always raised and who 
had no resort but in his outlawry from their sympathies. Moreover, his 
career is full of instruction and warning, and it has always been made a por- 
tion of the penalty of wrong that its anatomy should be displayed for the 
common study and advantage. 

The character of Mr. Poe's genius has been so recently and so admirably 
discussed by Mr. Lowell, with whose opinions on the subject I for the most 
part agree, that I shall say but little of it here, having already extended this 
notice. beyond the limits at first designed. There is a singular harmony be- 
tween his personal and his literary qualities. St. Pierre, who seemed to be 
without any nobility in his own nature, in his writings appeared to be moved 
only by the finest and highest impulses. Poe exhibits scarcely any virtue in 
either his life or his writings. Probably there is not another instance in the 
literature of our language in which so much has been accomplished without 
a recognition or a manifestation of conscience. Seated behind the intelli- 
gence, and directing it, according to its capacities, Conscience is the parent of 
whatever is absolutely and unquestionably beautiful in art as well as in con- 
duct. It touches the creations of the mind and they have life ; without it 
they have never, in the range of its just action, the truth and naturalness 
which are approved by universal +o . ouiiunng reputation. In Poe's 

works there is constantly display a the most touching melancholy, the moat 
extreme and terrible despair, but never reverence or remorse. 

His genius was peculiar, and not, as he himself thought, various. He re- 
marks, in one of his letters : 

"There is one particular in which I have had wrong done me, and it may not be indec- 
orous in me to call your attention to it. The last selection of my tales was made from 
about seventy by one of our great little cliquists and claquers, Wiley and Putnam's rea- 
der, Duyckinck. He has what he thinks a taste for ratiocination, and has accordingly 
made up the book mostly of analytic stories. But this is not representing my mind in its 
various phases — it is not giving me fair play. In writing these tales one by one, at long 
intervals, I have kept the book unity always in mind — that is, each has been composed 
with reference to its effect as part of a whole. In this view, one of my chief aims has 
been the widest diversity of subject, thought, and especially tone and manner of handling. 
Were all my tales now before me in a large volume, and as the composition of another, 
the merit which would principally arrest my attention would be their wide diversity and 
/variety. You will be surprised to hear me say that, (omitting one or two of my first 
efforts.) I do not consider any one of my stories better than another. There is a vast va- 
riety of kinds, and, in degree of value, these kinds vary — but each tale is equally good 
of its kind. The loftiest kind is that of the highest imagination — and for this reason 
only ' Ligeia ' may be called my best tale." 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 



But it seems to me that this selection of his tales was altogether judicious. 
Had it been submitted to me I might indeed have changed it in one or two 
instances, but I should not have replaced any tale by one of a different tone. 
One of the qualities upon which Poe prided himself was his humor, and he 
has left us a large number of compositions in this department, but except a 
few paragraphs in his " Marginalia," scarcely anything which it would not 
have been injurious to his reputation to republish. His realm was on the 
shadowy confines of human experience, among the abodes of crime, gloom, 
and horror, and there he delighted to surround himself with images of beau- 
ty and of terror, to raise his solemn palaces and towers and spires in a night 
upon which should rise no sun. His minuteness of detail, refinement of rea- 
soning, and propriety and power of language — the perfect keeping (to borrow 
a phrase from another domain of art) and apparent good faith with which he 
managed the evocation and exhibition of his strange and spectral and revolt- 
ing creations — gave him an astonishing mastery over his readers, so that his 
books were closed as one would lay aside the nightmare or the spells of opium. 
The analytical subtlety evinced in his works has frequently been over- 
estimated, as I have before observed, because it has not been sufficiently con- 
sidered that his mysteries were composed with the express design of being 
dissolved. When Poe attempted the illustration of the profounder operations 
of the mind, as displayed in written reason or in real action, he frequently 
failed entirely. 

In poetry, as in prose, he was eminently successful in the metaphysical 
treatment of the passions. His poems are constructed with wonderful inge- 
nuity, and finished with consummate art. They display a sombre and weird 
imagination, and a taste almost faultless in the apprehension of that sort of 
beauty which was most agreeable to his temper. But they evince little genuine 
feeling, and less ox that spontaneous ecstacy which gives its freedom, smooth- 
pe"«s and naturalness to immortal verse. JMs own account of the composition 
of " The Raven," discloses his methods — the absence of all impulse, and the 
absolute control of calculation and mechanism. That curious analysis of the 
processes by which he wrought would be incredible if from another hand. 

He was not remarkably original in invention. Indeed some of his plagiar- 
isms are scarcely paralleled for their audacity in all literary history : For in- 
stance, in his tale of " The Pit and the Pendulum," the complicate machinery 
upon which the interest depends is borrowed from a story entitled " Viven- 
zio, or Italian Vengeance," by the author of " The First and Last Dinner," in 
" Blackwood's Magazine." And I remember having been shown by Mr. Long- 
fellow, several years ago, a series of papers which constitute a demonstration 
that Mr. Poe was indebted to him for the idea of " The Haunted Palace," one 
of the most admirable of his poems, which he so pertinaciously asserted had 
been used by Mr. Longfellow in the production of his " Beleaguered City." Mr. 
Longfellow's poem was written two or three years before the first publication 
of that by Poe, and it was during a portion of this time in Poe's possession ; 
but it was not printed, I believe, until a few weeks after the appearance of 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 



" The Haunted Palace." " It would be absurd," as Poe himself said many 
times, " to believe the similarity of these pieces entirely accidental." This 
was the first cause of all that malignant criticism which for so many years he 
carried on against Mr. Longfellow. In his " Marginalia " he borrowed largely, 
especially from Coleridge, and I have omitted in the republication of these 
papers, numerous paragraphs which were rather compiled than borrowed 
from one of the profoundest and wisest of our own scholars.* 

In criticism, as Mr. Lowell justly remarks, Mr. Poe had " a scientific pre- 
cision and coherence of logic ;" he had remarkable dexterity in the dissection 
of sentences ; but he rarely ascended from the particular to the general, from 
subjects to principles : he was familiar with the microscope but never looked 
through the telescope. His criticisms are of value to the degree in which 
they are demonstrative, but his unsupported assertions and opinions were so 
apt to be influenced by friendship or enmity, by the desire to please or the 
fear to offend, or by his constant ambition to surprise, or produce a sensation, 
that they should be received in all cases with distrust of then- fairness. A 
volume might be filled with literary judgments by him as antagonistical and 
inconsistent as the sharpest antitheses. For example, when Mr. Laughton 
Osborn's romance, " The Confessions of a Poet," came out, he reviewed it in 
" The Southern Literary Messenger," saying : 

"There is nothing of the vates about the author. He is no poet — and most positively 
■he is no prophet. He avers upon his word of honor that in commencing this work he 
loads a pistol and places it upon the table. He further states that, upon coming to a con- 
clusion, it is his intention to blow out what he supposes to be his brains. Now this is 
excellent. But, even with so rapid a writer as the poet must undoubtedly be, there 
would be some little difficulty in completing the book under thirty days or thereabouts. 
The best of powder is apt to sustain injury by lying so long 'in the load.' We sincerely 
hope the gentleman took the precaution to examine his priming before attempting the 
rash act. A flash in the pan — and in such a case — were a thing to be lamented. Indeed 
there would be no answering for the consequences. We might even have a second 
series of the ' Confessions.' " — Southern Literary Messenger, i. 459. 

This review was attacked, particularly in the Richmond " Compiler," and 
Mr. Poe felt himself called upon to vindicate it to the proprietor of the maga- 
zine, to whom he wrote : 

" There is no necessity of giving the ' Compiler ' a reply. The book is silly enough of it- 
self, without the aid of any controversy concerning it. I have read it, from beginning 

* I have neither space, time, nor inclination for a continuation of this subject, and I 
add but one other instance, in the words of the Philadelphia " Saturday Evening Post," 
— published while Mr. Poe was living: 

" One of the most remarkable plagiarisms was perpetrated by Mr. Poe, late of the Broad- 
way Journal, whose harshness as a critic and assumption of peculiar originality, makes 
the fault, in his case, more glaring. This gentleman, a few years ago, in Philadelphia, 
published a work on Conchology as original, when in reality it was a copy, nearly ver- 
batim, of 'The Text Book of Conchology, by Capt. Thomas Brown,' printed in Glasgow 
in 1833, a duplicate of which we have in our library. Mr. Poe actually took out a copy- 
right for the American edition of Capt. Brown's work, and. omitting all mention of the 
English original, pretended, in the preface, to have been under great obligations to seve- 
ral scientific gentlemen of this city. It is but justice to add, that in the second edition 
of this book, published lately in Philadelphia, the name of Mr. Poe is withdrawn from 
the title-page, and his initials only affixed to the preface. But the affair is one of the 
most curious on record." 

B* 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 



to end, and was very much amused at it. My opinion of it is pretty nearly the opinion 
of the press at large. I have heard no person offer one serious word in its defence." — 
Letter to T. W. White. 

Afterwards Mr. Poe became personally acquainted with the author and he 
then wrote, in his account of " The Literati of New- York City," as follows : 

"The Confessions of a Poet made much noise in the literary world, and no little curi- 
osity was excited in regard to its author, who was generally supposed to be John 

Neal The " Confessions," however, far surpassed any production of Mr. NeaPs. . . . 

He has done nothing which, as a whole, is even respectable, and "The Confessions" are 
quite remarkable for their artistic unity and perfection. But on higher regards they are 
to be commended. / do not think, indeed, that a better book of its kind has been written 

in America Its scenes of passion are intensely wrought, its incidents are striking 

and original, its sentiments audacious and suggestive at least, if not at all times tenable. 
In a word, it is that rare thing, a fiction of power without rudeness." 

I will adduce another example of the same kind. In a notice of the " Dem- 
ocratic Review," for September, 1845, Mr. Poe remarks of Mr. William A. 
Jones's paper on American Humor : 

" There is only one really bad article in the number, and that is insufferable : nor do we 
think it the less a nuisance because it inflicts upon ourselves individually a passage of 
maudlin compliment about our being a most 'ingenious critic' and ' prose poet,' with 
some other things of a similar kind. We thank for his good word no man who gives pal- 
pable evidence, in other cases than our own, of his incapacity to distinguish the false 
from the true — the right from the wrong. If we are an ingenious critic, or a prose poet, 
it is not because Mr. William Jones says so. The truth is that this essay on 'American 
Humor' is contemptible both in a moral and literary sense — is the composition of an 
imitator and a quack — and disgraces the magazine in which it makes its appearance." 
— Broadway Journal, Vol. ii. No. 11. 

In the following week he reconsidered this matter, opening his paper for a 
defence of Mr. Jones ; but at the close of it said — 
" If we have done Mr. Jones injustice, we beg his pardon : but we do not think we have." 

Yet in a subsequent article in " Graham's Magazine," on " Critics and Criti- 
cism," he says of Mr. Jones — referring only to writings of his that had been 
for years before the public when he printed the above paragraphs : 

" Our most analytic, if not altogether our best critic, (Mr. Whipple, perhaps, excepted,) 
is Mr. William Ji. Jones, author of ' The Analyst.' How he would write elaborate criti- 
cisms I cannot say; but his summary judgments of authors are, in general, discriminative 
and profound. In fact, his papers on Emerson and on Macaulay, published in ' Arcturus,' 
are belter than merely 'profound,' if we take the word in its now desecrated sense; for 
they are at once pointed, lucid, and just:— as summaries, leaving nothing to be desired." 

I will not continue the display of these inconsistencies. As I have already 
intimated, a volume might be filled with passages to show that his criticisms 
were guided by no sense of duty, and that his opinions were so variable and 
eo liable to be influenced by unworthy considerations as to be really of no 
value whatever. 

It was among his remarkable habits that he preserved with scrupulous 
care everything that was published respecting himself or his works, and every- 
thing that was written to him in letters that could be used in any way for 
the establishment or extension of his reputation. In Philadelphia, hi 1843, 
he prepared with his own hands a sketch of his life for a paper called " The 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 



Museum." Many parts of it are untrue, but I refer to it for the purpose of 
quoting a characteristic instance of perversion in the reproduction of com- 
pliments : 

" Of ' William Wilson,' Mr. Washington Irving says: ' It is managed in a highly pic- 
turesque style, and its singular and mysterious interest is ably sustained throughout. In 
point of mere style, it is, perhaps, even superior to 'The House of Usher.' It is simpler. 
In the latter composition, he seems to have been distrustful of his etlects, or, rather, too 
solicitous of bringing them forth fully to the eye, and thus, perhaps, has laid on too much 
coloring. He has erred, however, on the safe side, that of exuberance, and the evil might 
easily be remedied, by relieving the style of some of its epithets:' [since done.] ' There 
would be no fear of injuring the graphic effect, which is powerful.' 1 The italics are Mr. 
Irving's own." 

Now Mr. Irving had said in a private letter that he thought the " House 
of Usher " was clever, and that " a volume of similar stories would be well 
received by the public." Poe sent him a magazine containing " William 
Wilson," asking his opinion of it, and Mr. Irving, expressly declining to pub- 
lish a word upon the subject, remarked in the same manner, that " the sin- 
gular and mysterious interest is well sustained," and that in point of style 
the tale was " much better " than the " House of Usher," winch, he says, 
" might be improved by relieving the style from some of the epithets : there 
is no danger of destroying the graphic effect, which is powerful." There is 
not a word in italics in Mr. Irving's letter, the meaning of which is quite 
changed by Mr. Poe's alterations. And this letter was not only published in 
the face of an implied prohibition, but made to seem like a deliberately 
expressed judgment in a public reviewal. - In the same way Mr. Poe pub- 
lished the following sentence as an extract from a letter by Miss Barrett : 

"Our great poet, Mr. Browning, author of Paracelsus, etc. is enthusiastic in his admira- 
tion of the rhythm." 

But on turning to Miss Barrett's letter I find that she wrote : 

" Our great poet, Mr. Browning, the author of ' Paracelsus,' and ' Bells and Pomegranates,' 
was struck much by the rhythm of that poem." 

The piece alluded to is " The Raven." 

It is not true, as has been frequently alleged since Mr. Poe's death, that his 
writings were above the popular taste, and therefore without a suitable 
market in this country. His poems were worth as much to magazines as 
those of Bryant or Longfellow, (though none of the publishers paid him half 
as large a price for them,) and his tales were as popular as those of Willis, 
who has been commonly regarded as the best magazinist of his time. He 
ceased to write for " The Lady's Book " in consequence of a quarrel induced 
by Mr. Godey's justifiable refusal to print in that miscellany his " Reply to 
Dr. English," and though in the poor fustian published under the signature of 
" George R. Graham," in answer to some remarks upon Poe's character in 
" The Tribune," that individual is made to assume a passionate friendship for 
the deceased author that would have become a Pythias, it is known that the 
personal ill-will on both sides was such that for some four or five years not a 
line by Poe was purchased for " Graham's Magazine? To quote again the 
" Defence of Mr. Poe " in the " Southern Literary Messenger :" 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 



" His changeable humors, his irregularities, his caprices, his total disregard of every- 
thing and body, save the fancy in his head, prevented him from doing well in the world. 
The evils and sufferings that poverty brought upon him, soured his nature, and deprived 
him of faith in human beings. This was evident to the eye — he believed in nobody, and 
cared for nobody. Such a mental condition of course drove away al! those who would 
otherwise have stood by him in his hours of trial. He became, and was, an Ishmaelite." 

After having, in no ungenerous spirit, presented the chief facts in Mr. Poe's 
history, not designedly exaggerating his genius, which none held in higher 
admiration, not bringing into bolder relief than was just and necessary his 
infirmities, I am glad to offer a portraiture of some of his social qualities, 
equally beautiful, and — so changeable and inconsistent was the man — as far as 
it goes, truthful. Speaking of him one day soon after his death, with the 
late Mrs. Osgood, the beauty of whose character had made upon Poe's mind 
that impression which it never failed to produce upon minds capable of the 
apprehension of the finest traits in human nature, she said she did not doubt 
that my view of Mr. Poe, which she knew indeed to be the common view, 
was perfectly just, as it regarded him in his relations with men ; but to women 
he was different, and she would write for me some recollections of him to be 
placed beside my harsher judgments in any notice of his hie that the acceptance 
of the appointment to be his literary executor might render it necessary for 
me to give to the world. She was an invalid — dying of that consumption 
by which in a few weeks she was removed to heaven, and calling for pillows 
to support her while she wrote, she drew this sketch : 

" You ask me, my friend, to write for you my reminiscences of Edgar Poe. For you, who 
knew and understood my affectionate interest in him, and my frank acknowledgment of 
that interest to all who had a claim upon my confidence, for you, I will willingly do so. I 
think no one could know him — no one has known him personally — certainly no woman — 
without feeling the same interest, I can sincerely say, that although I have frequently 
heard of aberrations on his part from 'the straight and narrow path,' I have never seen 
him otherwise than gentle, generous, well-bred, and fastidiously refined. To a sensitive 
and delicately-nurtured woman, there was a peculiar and irresistible charm in the chivalric, 
graceful, and almost tender reverence with which he invariably approached all women 
who won his respect. It was this which first commanded and always retained my regard 
for him. 

" I have been told that when his sorrows and pecuniary embarrassments had driven him 
to the use of stimulants, which a less delicate organization might have borne without 
injury, he was in the habit of speaking disrespectfully of the ladies of his acquaintance. 
It is difficult for me to believe this; for to me, to whom he came during the year of our 
acquaintance for counsel and kindness in all his many anxieties and griefs, he never 
spoke irreverently of any woman save one, and then only in my defence, and though I 
rebuked him for his momentary forgetfulness of the respect due to himself and to me, I 
could not but forgive the offence for the sake of the generous impulse which prompted it. 
Yet even were these sad rumors true of him, the wise and well-informed knew how to 
regard, as they would the impetuous anger of a spoiled infant, balked of its capricious 
will, the equally harmless and unmeaning phrenzy of that stray child of Poetry and 
Passion. For the few unwomanly and slander-loving gossips who have injured him and 
themselves only by repeating his ravings, when in such moods they have accepted his 
society, I have only to vouchsafe my wonder and my pity. They cannot surely harm 
the true and pure, who, reverencing his genius and pitying his misfortunes and his errors, 
endeavored, by their timely kindness and sympathy, to soothe his sad career. 

" It was in his own simple yet poetical home that, to me the character of Edgar Poo 
appeared in its most beautiful light. Playful, affectionate, witty, alternately docile and 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. xxxvii 

wayward as a petted child— for his young, gentle and idolized wife, and for all who came, 
he had even in the midst of his most harassing literary duties, a kind word, a pleasant 
smile, a graceful and courteous attention. At his desk beneath the romantic picture of 
his loved and lost Lenore, he would sit, hour 'after hour, patient, assiduous and uncom- 
plaining, tracing, in an exquisitely clear chirography and with almost superhuman 
swiftness, the lightning thoughts— the 'rare and radiant ' fancies as they flashed through 
his wonderful and ever wakeful brain. I recollect, one morning, towards the close of his 
residence in this city, when he seemed unusually gay and light-hearted. Virginia, his 
sweet wife, had written me a pressing invitation to come to them : and I, who never could 
resist her affectionate summons, and who enjoyed his society far more in his own home 
than elsewhere, hastened to Amity-street. I found him just completing his series of pa- 
pers entitled 'The Literati of New- York.' ' See,' said he, displaying, in laughing triumph, 
several little rolls of narrow paper, (he always wrote thus for the press,) ' I am going to 
show you, by the difference of length in these, the different degrees of estimation in 
which I hold all you literary people. In each of these, one of you is rolled up and fully 
discussed. Come, Virginia, help me !' And one by one they unfolded them. At last 
they came to one which seemed interminable. Virginia laughingly ran to one corner of 
the room with one end, and her husband to the opposite with the other. 'And whose 
lengthened sweetness long drawn out is that?' said I. 'Hear her !' he cried, 'just as if 
her little vain heart didn't tell her it's herself!' 

" My first meeting with the poet was at the Astor House. A few days previous, Mr. 
Wil.ls had handed me, at the takle d'hote, that strange and thrilling poem entitled ' The 
Raven,' saying that the author wanted my opinion of it. Its effect upon me was so 
singular, so like that of ' wierd, unearthly music,' that it was with a feeling almost of 
dread, I heard he desired an introduction. Yet I could not refuse without seeming un- 
grateful, because I h'ad just heard of his enthusiastic and partial eulogy of my writings, in 
his lecture on American Literature. I shall never forget the morning when I was summon- 
ed to the drawing-room by Mr. Willis to receive him. With his proud and beautiful head 
erect, his dark eyes flashing with the elective light of feeling and of thought, a peculiar, 
an inimitable blending of sweetness and hauteur in his expression and manner, he 
greeted me, calmly, gravely, almost coldly; yet with so marked an earnestness that I 
could not help being deeply impressed by it. From that moment until his death we were 
friends; although we met only during the first year of our acquaintance. And in his 
last words, ere reason had forever left her imperial throne in that overtasked brain, I have 
a touching memento of his undying faith and friendship. 

"During that year, while travelling for my health, I maintained a correspondence with 
Mr. Poe, in accordance with the earnest entreaties of his wife, who imagined that my 
influence over him had a restraining and beneficial effect. It had, as far as this — that 
having solemnly promised me to give up the use of stimulants, he so firmly respected his 
promise and me, as never once, during our whole acquaintance, to appear in my presence 
when in the slightest degree affected by them. Of the charming love and confidence 
that existed between his wife and himself, always delightfully apparent to me, in spite of 
the many little poetical episodes, in which the impassioned romance of his temperament 
impelled him to indulge ; of this I cannot speak too earnestly — too warmly. I believe 
she was the only woman whom he ever truly loved ; and this is evidenced by the exquisite 
pathos of the little poem lately written, called Annabel Lee, of which she was the subject, 
and which is by far the most natural, simple, tender and touchingly beautiful of all his 
songs. I have heard it said that it was intended to illustrate a late love affair of the 
author ; but they who believe this, have in their dullness, evidently misunderstood or 
missed the beautiful meaning latent in the most lovely of all its verses— where he says, 

" A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling 
My beautiful Annabel Lee, 
So tnat her high-born kinsmen came, 
And bore her away from me." 

"There seems a strange and almost profane disregard of the sacred purity and spiritual 
tenderness of this delicious ballad, in thus overlooking the allusion to the kindred angels 
and the heavenly Father of the lost and loved and unforgotten wife. 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 



" But it was in his conversations and his letters, far more than in his published poetry 
and prose writings, that the genius of Poe was most gloriously revealed. His letters 
were divinely beautiful, and for hours I have listened to him, entranced by strains of such 
pure and almost celestial eloquence as I have never read or heard elsewhere. Alas ! in 
the thrilliDg words of Stoddard, 

" He might have soared in the morning light, 
But he built his nest with the birds of night! 
But he lies in dust, and the stone is rolled 
Over the sepulchre dim and cold ; 
He has cancelled all he has done or said, 
And gone to the dear and holy dead. 
Let us forget the path he trod, 
And leave him now, to his Maker, God." 

The influence of Mr. Poe's aims and vicissitudes upon his literature, was 
more conspicuous in his later than in his earlier writings. Nearly all that 
he wrote in the last two or three years — including much of his best poetry, 
— was in some sense biographical; in draperies of his imagination, those 
who take the trouble to trace his steps, will perceive, but slightly concealed, 
the figure of himself. The lineaments here disclosed, I think, are not different 
from those displayed in this biography, which is but a filling up of the pic- 
ture. Thus far the few criticisms of his life or works that I have ventured 
have been suggested by the immediate examination of the points to which 
they referred. I add but a few words, of more general description. 

In person he was below the middle height, slenderly but compactly form- 
ed, and in his better moments he had in an eminent degree that air of gentle- 
manliness which men of a lower order seldom succeed in acquiring. 

His conversation was at times almost supra-mortal in its eloquence. His 
voice was modulated with astonishing skill, and his large and variably ex- 
pressive eyes looked repose or shot fiery tumult into theirs who listened, 
while his own face glowed, or was changeless in pallor, as his imagination 
quickened his blood or drew it back frozen to his heart. His imagery was 
from the worlds which no mortals can see but with the vision of genius. 
Suddenly starting from a proposition, exactly and sharply defined, in terms 
of utmost simplicity and clearness, he rejected the forms of customary logic, 
and by a crystalline process of accretion, built up his ocular demonstrations 
in forms of gloomiest and ghastliest grandeur, or in those of the most airy 
and delicious beauty — so minutely and distinctly, yet so rapidly, that the at- 
tention which was yielded to him was chained till it stood among his won- 
derful creations — till he himself dissolved the spell, and brought his hearers 
back to common and base existence, by vulgar fancies or exhibitions of the 
ignoblest passion. 

He was at all times a dreamer — dwelling in ideal realms — in heaven or 
hell — peopled with the creatures and the accidents of his brain. He walked 
the streets, in madness or melancholy, with lips moving in indistinct curses, 
or with eyes upturned in passionate prayer, (never for himself, for he felt, or 
professed to feel, that he was already damned, but) for their happiness who 
at the moment were objects of his idolatry ; — or, with his glances introverted 
to a heart gnawed with anguish, and with a face shrouded in gloom, he would 
brave the wildest storms ; and all night, with drenched garments and arms 
beating the winds and rains, would speak as if to spirits that at such times 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 



only could be evoked by him from the Aidenn, close by whose portals his 
disturbed soul sought to forget the ills to which his constitution subjected 
him — close by the Aidenn where were those he loved — the Aidenn which he 
might never see, but in fitful glimpses, as its gates opened to receive the less 
fiery and more happy natures whose destiny to sin did not involve the doom 
of death. 

He seemed, except when some fitful pursuit subjugated his will and en- 
grossed his faculties, always to bear the memory of some controlling sorrow. 
The remarkable poem of " The Raven " was probably much more nearly 
than has been supposed, even by those who were very intimate with him, a 
reflection and an echo of his own history. He was that bird's 

*' unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster 

Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one hurden bore — 
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore 

Of ' Never — never more.' " 

Every genuine author, in a greater or less degree, leaves in his works, 
whatever their design, traces of his personal character : elements of his im- 
mortal being, in which the individual survives the person. While we read 
the pages of the " Fall of the House of Usher," or of " Mesmeric Revelations," 
we see in the solemn and stately gloom which invests one, and in the subtle 
metaphysical analysis of both, indications of the idiosyncracies — of what 
was most remarkable and peculiar — in the author's intellectual nature. But 
we see here only the better phases of his nature, only the symbols of his 
juster action, for his harsh experience had deprived him of all faith, in man 
or woman. He had made up his mind upon the numberless complexities of 
the social world, and the whole system with him was an imposture. This 
conviction gave a direction to his shrewd and naturally unamiable character. 
Still, though he regarded society as composed altogether of villains, the 
sharpness of his intellect was not of that kind which enabled him to cope 
with villany, while it continually caused him by overshots to fail of the suc- 
cess of honesty. He was in many respects like Francis Vivian, in Bulwer's 
novel of " The Caxtons." Passion, in him, comprehended many of the worst 
emotions which militate against human happiness. You could not contradict 
him, but you raised quick choler ; you could not speak of wealth, but his 
cheek paled with gnawing envy. The astonishing natural advantages of this 
poor boy — his beauty, his readiness, the daring spirit that breathed around 
him like a fiery atmosphere — had raised his constitutional self-confidence into 
an arrogance that turned his very claims to admiration into prejudices 
against him. Irascible, envious — bad enough, but not the worst, for these 
salient angles were all varnished over with a cold repellant synicism, his 
passions vented themselves in sneers. There seemed to him no moral sus- 
ceptibility ; and, what was more remarkable in a proud nature, little or no- 
thing of the true point of honor. He had, to a morbid excess, that desire to 
rise which is vulgarly called ambition, but no wish for the esteem of the love 
of his species ; only the hard wish to succeed — not shine, not serve — succeed, 
that he might have the right to despise a world which galled his self-conceit. 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 



In speaking of the Poetic Principle, I have no design to be 
either thorough or profound. While discussing, very much at 
random, the essentiality of what we call Poetry, my principal 
purpose will be to cite for consideration, some few of those minor 
English or American poems which best suit my own taste, or 
which, upon 'my own fancy, have left the most definite impres- 
sion. By " minor poems" I mean, of course, poems of little 
length. And here, in the beginning, permit me to say a few 
words in regard to a somewhat peculiar principle, which, whether 
rightfully or wrongfully, has always had its influence in my own 
critical estimate of the poem. I hold that a long poem does not 
exist. I maintain that the phrase, "a long poem," is simply a 
flat contradiction in terms. 

I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inas- 
much as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem 
is in the ratio of this elevating excitement. But all excitements 
are, through a psychal necessity, transient. That degree of ex- 
citement which would entitle a poem to be so called at all, cannot 
be sustained throughout a composition of any great length. After 
the lapse of half an hour, at the very utmost, it flags — -fails — a 
revulsion ensues — and then the poem is, in effect, and in fact, no 
longer such. 

There are, no doubt, many who have found difficulty in recon- 
ciling the critical dictum that the " Paradise Lost" is to be de- 
voutly admired throughout, with the absolute impossibility of 
maintaining for it, during perusal, the amount of enthusiasm which 

Vol. III.— 2 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 



that critical dictum would demand. This great work, in fact, is 
to be regarded as poetical, only when, losing sight of that vital 
requisite in all works of Art, Unity, we view it merely as a 
series of minor poems. If, to preserve its Unity — its totality of 
effect or impression — we read it (as would be necessary) at a sin- 
gle sitting, the result is but a constant alternation of excitement 
and depression. After a passage of what we feel to be true poe- 
try, there follows, inevitably, a passage of platitude which no 
critical pre-judgment can force us to admire ; but if, upon com- 
pleting the work, we read it again ; omitting the first book — that 
is to say, commencing with the second — we shall be surprised at 
now finding that admirable which we before condemned — that 
damnable which we had previously so much admired. It follows 
from all this that the ultimate, aggregate, or absolute effect of 
even the best epic under the sun, is a nullity : — and this is pre- 
cisely the fact. 

In regard to the Iliad, we have, if not positive proof, at least 
very good reason, for believing it intended as a series of lyrics ; 
but, granting the epic intention, I can say only that the work is 
based in an imperfect sense of Art. The modern epic is, of the 
suppositious ancient model, but an inconsiderate and blindfold 
imitation. But the day of these artistic anomalies is over. If, 
at any time, any very long poem were popular in reality — which 
I doubt — it is at least clear that no very long poem will ever be 
popular again. 

That the extent of a poetical work is, ceteris paribus, the mea- 
sure of its merit, seems undoubtedly, when we thus state it, a 
proposition sufficiently absurd — yet we are indebted for it to the 
quarterly Reviews. Surely there can be nothing in mere size, 
abstractly considered — there can be nothing in mere bulk, so far as a 
volume is concerned, which has so continuously elicited admira- 
tion from these saturnine pamphlets ! A mountain, to be sure, 
by the mere sentiment of physical magnitude which it conveys, 
does impress us with a sense of the sublime — but no man is im- 
pressed after this fashion by the material grandeur of even "The 
Columbiad." Even the Quarterlies have not instructed us to be 
so impressed by it. As yet, they have not insisted on our esti- 
mating Lamartine by the cubic foot, or Pollock by the pound — 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 



but what else are we to infer from their continual prating about 
" sustained effort ?" If, by " sustained effort," any little gentle- 
man has accomplished an epic, let us frankly commend him for 
the effort — if this indeed be a thing commendable — but let us 
forbear praising the epic on the effort's account. It is to be hoped 
that common sense, in the time to come, will prefer deciding upon 
a work of Art, rather by the impression it makes — by the effect 
it produces — than by the time it took to impress the effect, or by 
the amount of " sustained effort" which had been found neces- 
sary in effecting the impression. The fact is, that perseverance 
is one thing and genius quite another — nor can all the Quarter- 
lies in Christendom confound them. By-and-by, this proposition, 
with many which I have been just urging, will be received as self- 
evident. In the meantime, by being generally condemned as 
falsities, they will not be essentially damaged as truths. 

On the other hand, it is clear that a poem may be improperly 
brief. Undue brevity degenerates into mere epigrammatism. A 
very short poem, while now and then producing a brilliant or 
vivid, never produces a profound or enduring effect. There must 
be the steady pressing down of the stamp upon the wax. De 
Beranger has wrought innumerable things, pungent and spirit- 
stirring ; but, in general, they have been too imponderous to 
stamp themselves deeply into the public attention ; and thus, as 
so many feathers of fancy, have been blown aloft only to be whis- 
tled down the wind. 

A remarkable instance of the effect of undue brevity in depress- 
ing a poem — in keeping it out of the popular view — is afforded 
by the following exquisite little Serenade : 



I arise from dreams of thee 

In the first sweet sleep of night 
When the winds are breathing low, 

And the stars are shining bright. 
I arise from dreams of thee, 

And a spirit in my feet 
Has led me — who knows how ? — 

To thy chamber-window, sweet ! 

The wandering airs they faint 
On the dark, the silent stream — 

The champak odors fail 

Like sweet thoughts in a dream ; 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 



The nightingale's complaint, 

It dies upon her heart, 
As I must die on thine, 

0, beloved as thou art ! 

0, lift me from the grass ! 

I die, I faint, I fail ! 
Let thy love in kisses rain 

On my lips and eyelids pale. 
My cheek is cold and white, alas ! 

My heart beats loud and fast : 
Oh ! press it close to thine again, 

Where it will break at last ! 

Very few, perhaps, are familiar with these lines — yet no 
/ess a poet than Shelley is their author. Their warm, yet 
delicate and ethereal imagination will be appreciated by all — 
but by none so thoroughly as by him who has himself arisen from 
iweet dreams of one beloved, to bathe in the aromatic air of a 
southern midsummer night. 

One of the finest poems by Willis — the very best, in my 
opinion, which he has ever written — has, no doubt, through this 
same defect of undue brevity, been kept back from its proper po- 
sition, not less in the critical than in the popular view. 

The shadows lay along Broadway, 
Twas near the twilight-tide — 
And slowly there a lady fair 
"Was walking in her pride. 
Alone walk'd she ; but, viewlessly, 
Walk'd spirits at her side. 

Peace charm'd the street beneath her feet, 

And Honor charm'd the air ; 
And all astir looked kind on her, 

And call'd her good as fair — 
For all God ever gave to her 

She kept with chary care. 

She kept with care her beauties rare 

From lovers warm and true — 
For her heart was cold to all but gold, 

And the rich came not to woo — 
But honor'd well are charms to sell 

If priests the selling do. 

Now walking there was one more fair — 

A slight girl, lily-pale ; 
And she had unseen company 

To make the spirit quail — 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 



'Twixt Want and Scorn she walk'd forlorn, 
And nothing could avail. 

No mercy now can clear her brow 

For this world's peace to pray ; 
For, as love's wild prayer dissolved in air, 

Her woman's heart gave way ! — 
But the sin forgiven by Christ in Heaven 

By man is cursed alway I 

In this composition we find it difficult to recognise the Willis 
•who has written so many mere " verses of society." The lines 
are not only richly ideal, but full of energy ; while they breathe 
an earnestness — an evident sincerity of sentiment — for which we 
look in vain throughout all the other works of this author. 

While the epic mania — while the idea that, to merit in poetry, 
prolixity is indispensable — has, for some years past, been gradu- 
ally dying out of the public mind, by mere dint of its own absur- 
dity — we find it succeeded by a heresy too palpably false to be 
long tolerated, but one which, in the brief period it has already 
endured, may be said to have accomplished more in the corrup- 
tion of our Poetical Literature than all its other enemies combined. 
I allude to the heresy of The Didactic. It has been assumed, 
tacitly and avowedly, directly and indirectly, that the ultimate 
object of all Poetry is Truth. Every poem, it is said, should in- 
culcate a moral ; and by this moral is the poetical merit of the 
work to be adjudged. We Americans especially have patronized 
this happy idea ; and we Bostonians, very especially, have de- 
veloped it in full. We have taken it into our heads that to write 
a poem simply for the poem's sake, and to acknowledge such to 
have been our design, would be to confess ourselves radically want- 
ing in the true Poetic dignity and force : — but the simple fact is, 
that, would we but permit ourselves to look into our own souls, 
we should immediately there discover that under the sun there 
neither exists nor can exist any work more thoroughly dignified — 
more supremely noble than this very poem — this poem per se — 
this poem which is a poem and nothing more — this poem written 
solely for the poem's sake. 

With as deep a reverence for the True as ever inspired the 
bosom of man, I would, nevertheless, limit, in some measure, its 
modes of inculcation. I would limit to enforce them. I would 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 



not enfeeble them by dissipation. The demands of Truth are 
severe. She has no sympathy with the myrtles. All that which 
is so indispensable in Song, is precisely all that with which she 
has nothing whatever to do. It is but making her a flaunting 
paradox, to wreathe her in gems and flowers. In enforcing a 
truth, we need severity rather than efflorescence of language. We 
must be simple, precise, terse. We must be cool, calm, unimpas- 
sioned. In a word, we must be in that mood which, as nearly as 
possible, is the exact converse of the poetical. He must be blind 
indeed who does not perceive the radical and chasmal differences 
between the truthful and the poetical modes of inculcation. He 
must be theory-mad beyond redemption who, in spite of these 
differences, shall still persist in attempting to reconcile the obsti- 
nate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth. 

Dividing the world of mind into its three most immediately ob- 
vious distinctions, we have the Pure Intellect, Taste, and the 
Moral Sense. I place Taste in the middle, because it is just this 
position which, in the mind, it occupies. It holds intimate rela- 
tions with either extreme ; but from the Moral Sense is separated 
by so faint a difference that Aristotle has not hesitated to place 
some of its operations among the virtues themselves. Neverthe- 
less, we find the offices of the trio marked with a sufficient dis- 
tinction. Just as the Intellect concerns itself with Truth, so Taste 
informs us of the Beautiful while the Moral Sense is regardful of 
Duty. Of this latter, while Conscience teaches the obligation, 
and Reason the expediency, Taste contents herself with displaying 
the charms : — waging war upon Vice solely on the ground of her 
deformity — her disproportion — her animosity to the fitting, to the ' 
appropriate, to the harmonious — in a word, to Beauty. 

An immortal instinct, deep within the spirit of man, is thus, 
plainly, a sense of the Beautiful. This it is which administers to 
his dehght in the manifold forms, and sounds, and odors, and sen- 
timents amid which he exists. And just as the lily is repeated in 
the lake, or the eyes of Amaryllis in the mirror, so is the mere 
oral or written repetition of these forms, and sounds, and colors, 
and odors, and sentiments, a duplicate source of delight. But 
this mere repetition is not poetry. He who shall simply sing, 
with however glowing enthusiasm, or with however vivid a truth 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 



of description, of the sights, and sounds, and odors, and colors, 
and sentiments, which greet him in common with all mankind — 
he, I say, has yet failed to prove his divine title. There is still a 
something in the distance which he has been unable to attain. 
We have still a thirst unquenchable, to allay which he has not 
shown us the crystal springs. This thirst belongs to the immor- 
tality of Man. It is at once a consequence and an indication of 
his perennial existence. It is the desire of the moth for the star. 
It is no mere appreciation of the Beauty before us — but a wild 
effort to reach the Beauty above. Inspired by an ecstatic pre- 
science of the glories beyond the grave, we struggle, by multiform 
combinations among the things and thoughts of Time, to attain 
a portion of that Loveliness whose very elements, perhaps, apper- 
tain to eternity alone. And thus when by Poetry — or when by 
Music, the most entrancing of the Poetic moods — we find our- 
selves melted into tears — we weep then — not as the Abbate 
Gravina supposes — through excess of pleasure, but through a 
certain, petulant, impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp now, 
wholly, here on earth, at once and forever, those divine and rap- 
turous joys, of which through the poem, or through the music, we 
attain to but brief and indeterminate glimpses. 

The struggle to apprehend the supernal Loveliness — this strug- 
gle, on the part of souls fittingly constituted — has given to the 
world all that which it (the world) has ever been enabled at once 
to understand and to feel as poetic. ■ 

The Poetic Sentiment, of course, may develope itself in various 
modes — in Painting, in Sculpture, in Architecture, in the Dance — 
very especially in Music — and very peculiarly, and with a wide 
field, in the composition of the Landscape Garden. Our present 
theme, however, has regard only to its manifestation in words. 
And here let me speak briefly on the topic of rhythm. Content- 
ing myself with the certainty that Music, in its various modes of 
metre, rhythm, and rhyme, is of so vast a moment in Poetry as 
never to be wisely rejected — is so vitally important an adjunct, 
that he is simply silly who declines its assistance, I will not now 
pause to maintain its absolute essentiality. It is in Music, per- 
haps, that the soul most nearly attains the great end for which, 
when inspired by the Poetic Sentiment, it struggles — the creation 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 



of supernal Beauty. It may be, indeed, that here this sublime end 
is, now and then, attained in fact. We are often made to feel, 
with a shivering delight, that from an earthly harp are stricken 
notes which cannot have been unfamiliar to the angels. And thus 
there can be little doubt that in the union of Poetry with Music 
in its popular sense, we shall find the widest field for the Poetic 
development. The old Bards and Minnesingers had advantages 
which we do not possess — and Thomas Moore, singing his own 
songs, was, in the most legitimate manner, perfecting them as poems. 

To recapitulate, then : — I would define, in brief, the Poetry of 
words as The Rythmical Creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is 
Taste. With the Intellect or with the Conscience, it has only 
collateral relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern what- 
ever either with Duty or with Truth. 

A few words, however, in explanation. That pleasure which 
is at once the most pure, the most elevating, and the most intense, 
is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the Beautiful. 
In the contemplation of Beauty we alone find it possible to attain 
that pleasurable elevation, or excitement, of the soul, which we 
recognise as the Poetic Sentiment, and which is so easily distin- 
guished from Truth, which is the satisfaction of the Reason, or 
from Passion, which is the excitement of the heart. I make 
Beauty, therefore — using the word as inclusive of the sublime — I 
make Beauty the province of the poem, simply because it is an 
obvious rule of Art that effects should be made to spring as di- 
rectly as possible from their causes : — no one as yet having been 
weak enough to deny that the peculiar elevation in question is at 
least most readily attainable in the poem. It by no means fol- 
lows, however, that the incitements of Passion, or the precepts of 
Duty, or even the lessons of Truth, may not be introduced into a 
poem, and with advantage ; for they may subserve, incidentally, 
in various ways, the general purposes of the work : — but the true 
artist will always contrive to tone them down in proper subjection 
to that Beauty which is the atmosphere and the real essence of 
the poem. 

I cannot better introduce the few poems which I shall present 
for your consideration, than by the citation of the Proem to Mr. 
Longfellow's "Waif": 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 



The day is done, and the darkness 

Falls from the wings of Night,* 
As a feather is wafted downward 

From an Eagle in his flight. 

I see the lights of the village 

Gleam through the rain and the mist, 
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me, 

That my soul cannot resist ; 

A feeling of sadness and longing, 

That is not akin to pain, 
And resembles sorrow only 

As the mist resembles the rain. 

Come, read to me some poem, 

Some simple and heartfelt lay, 
That shall soothe this restless feeling, 

And banish the thoughts of day. 

Not from the grand old masters, 

Not from the bards sublime, 
Whose distant footsteps echo 

Through the corridors of time. 

For, like strains of martial music, 

Their mighty thoughts suggest 
Life's endless toil and endeavor ; 

And to-night I long for rest. 

Read from some humbler poet, 

Whose songs gushed from his heart, 
As showers from the clouds of summer, 

Or tears from the eyelids start ; 

Who through long days of labor, 

And nights devoid of ease, 
Still heard in his soul the music 

Of wonderful melodies. 

Such songs have power to quiet 

The restless pulse of care, 
And come like the benediction 

That follows after prayer. 

Then read from the treasured volume 

The poem of thy choice, 
And lend to the rhyme of the poet 

The beauty of thy voice. 

And the night shall be filled with music, 

And the cares, that infest the day, 
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, 

And as silently steal away. 

With no great range of imagination, these lines have been 
justly admired for their delicacy of expression. Some of the im- 
ages are very effective. Nothing can be better than — 

a* 



10 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 



The bards sublime, 

Whose distant footsteps echo 
Down the corridors of Tune. 

The idea of the last quartrain is also very effective. The poem, 
on the whole, however, is chiefly to be admired for the graceful 
insouciance of its metre, so well in accordance with the character 
of the sentiments, and especially for the ease of the general man- 
ner. This " ease," or naturalness, in a literary style, it has long 
been the fashion to regard as ease in appearance alone — as a 
point of really difficult attainment. But not so : — a natural man- 
ner is difficult only to him who should never meddle with it — to 
the unnatural. It is but the result of writing with the under- 
standing, or with the instinct, that the tone, in composition, should 
always be that which the mass of mankind would adopt — and 
must perpetually vary, of course, with the occasion. The author 
who, after the fashion of " The North American Review," should 
be, upon all occasions, merely " quiet," must necessarily upon 
many occasions, be simply silly, or stupid ; and has no more right 
to be considered "easy," or "natural," than a Cockney exquisite, 
or than the sleeping Beauty in the wax-works. 

Among the minor poems of Bryant, none has so much im- 
pressed me as the one which he entitles " June." I quote only 
a portion of it : 

There, through the long, long summer hours, 

The golden light should lie, 
And thick, young herbs and groups of flowers 

Stand in their beauty by. 
The oriole should build and tell 
His love-tale, close beside my cell ; 

The idle butterfly 
Should rest him there, and there be heard 
The housewife-bee and humming bird. 

And what, if cheerful shouts, at noon, 

Come, from the village sent, 
Or songs of maids, beneath the moon, 

With fairy laughter blent ? 
And what if, in the evening light, 
Betrothed lovers walk in sight 

Of my low monument ? 
I would the lovely scene around 
Might know no sadder sight nor sound. 

I know, I know I should not see 
The season's glorious show, 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 11 

Nor would its brightness shine for me, 

Nor its wild music flow ; 
But if, around my place of sleep, 
The friends I love should come to weep, 

They might not haste to go. 
Soft airs, and song, and light, and bloom 
Should keep them lingering by my tomb. 

These to their soften'd hearts should bear 

The thought of what has been, 
And speak of one who cannot share 

The gladness of the scene ; 
Whose part in all the pomp that fills 
The circuit of the summer hills, 

_ Is — that his grave is green ; 
And deeply would their hearts rejoice 
To hear again his living voice. 

The ryhthmical flow, here, is even voluptuous — nothing could 
be more melodious. The poem has always affected me in a re- 
markable manner. The intense melancholy which seems to well 
up, perforce, to the surface of all the poet's cheerful sayings about 
his grave, we find thrilling us to the soul — while there is the tru- 
est poetic elevation in the thrill. The impression left is one of a 
pleasurable sadness. And if, in the remaining compositions which. 
I shall introduce to you, there be more or less of a similar tone 
always apparent, let me remind you that (how or why we know 
not) this certain taint of sadness is inseparably connected with all 
the higher manifestations of true Beauty. It is, nevertheless, 

A feeling of sadness and longing 

That is not akin to. pain, 
And resembles sorrow only 

As the mist resembles the rain. 

The taint of which I speak is clearly perceptible even in a poem 
so full of brilliancy and spirit as the " Health" of Edward Coote 
Pinkney : 

I fill this cup to one made up 

Of loveliness alone, 
A woman, of her gentle sex 

The seeming paragon ; 
To whom the better elements 

And kindly stars have given 
A form so fair, that, like the air, 
'Tis less of earth than heaven. 

Her every tone is music's own, 

Like those of morning birds, 
And something more than melody 

Dwells ever in her words ; 



12 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 

The coinage of her heart are they, 

And from her lips each flows 
As one may see the burden'd bee 

Forth issue from the rose. 

Affections are as thoughts to her, 

The measures of her hours ; 
Her feelings have the fragrancy, 

The freshness of young flowers ; 
And lovely passions, changing oft, 

So fill her, she appears 
The image of themselves by turns, — 

The idol of past years ! 

Of her bright face one glance will trace 

A picture on the brain, * 

And of her voice in echoing hearts 

A sound must long remain ; 
But memory, such as mine of her, 

So very much endears, 
When death is nigh my latest sigh 

Will not be life's, but hers. 

I fill'd this cup to one made up 

Of loveliness alone, 
A woman, of her gentle sex 

The seeming paragon — 
Her health ! and would on earth there stood, 

Some more of such a frame, 
That life might be all poetry, 

And weariness a name. 

It was the misfortune of Mr. Pinkhey to have been born too far 
south. Had he been a New Englander, it is probable that he 
■would have been ranked as the first of American lyrists, by that 
magnanimous cabal which has so long controlled the destinies of 
American Letters, in conducting the thinp; called " The North 
American Review." The poem just cited is especially beautiful ; 
but the poetic elevation which it induces, we must refer chiefly to 
our sympathy in the poet's enthusiasm. We pardon his hyper- 
boles for the evident earnestness with which they are uttered. 

It was by no means my design, however, to expatiate upon 
the merits of what I should read you. These will necessarily 
speak for themselves. Boccalini, in his " Advertisements from 
Parnassus," tells us that Zoilus once presented Apollo a very caus- 
tic criticism upon a very admirable book : — whereupon the god 
asked him for the beauties of the work. He replied that he only 
busied himself about the errors. On hearing this, Apollo, hand- 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 18 

ing him a sack of unwinnowed wheat, bade him pick out all the 
chaff for his reward. 

Now this fable answers very well as a hit at the critics — but I 
am by no means sure that the god was in the right. I am by no 
means certain that the true limits of the critical duty are not 
grossly misunderstood. Excellence, in a poem especially, may be 
considered in the light of an axiom, which need only be properly 
put, to become self-evident. It is not excellence if it require to be 
demonstrated as such : — and thus, to point out too particularly the 
merits of a work of Art, is to admit that they are not merits 
altogether. 

Among the " Melodies" of Thomas Moore, is one whose distin- 
guished character as a poem proper, seems to have been singular- 
ly left out of view. I allude to his lines beginning — " Come rest 
in this bosom." The intense energy of their expression is not sur- 
passed by anything in Byron. There are two of the lines in 
which a sentiment is conveyed that embodies the all in all of the 
divine passion of Love — a sentiment which, perhaps, has found its 
echo in more, and in more passionate, human hearts than, any 
other single sentiment ever embodied in words : 

Come, rest in this bosom, my own stricken deer, 

Though the herd have fled from thee, thy home is still here ; 

Here still is the smile, that no cloud can o'ercast, 

And a heart and a hand all thy own to the last. 

Oh ! what was love made for, if 't is- not the same 
Through joy and through torment, through glory and shame ? 
I know not, I ask not, if guilt 's in that heart, 
I but know that I love thee, whatever thou art. 

Thou hast call'd me thy Angel in moments of bliss, 
And thy Angel I'll be, 'mid the horrors of this, — 
Through the furnace, unshrinking, thy steps to pursue, 
And shield thee, and save thee, — or perish there too ! 

It has been the fashion, of late days, to deny Moore Imagination, 
while granting him Fancy — a distinction originating with Cole- 
ridge — than whom no man more fully comprehended the great 
powers of Moore. The fact is, that the fancy of this poet so far 
predominates over all his other faculties, and over the fancy of all 
other men, as to have induced, very naturally, the idea that he is 
fanciful only. But never was there a greater mistake. Never was 
a grosser wrong done the fame of a true poet. In the compass of 



14 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 

the English language I can call to mind no poem more profound- 
ly — more wierdly imaginative, in the best sense, than the lines 
commencing — " I would I were by that dim lake'' — which are the 
composition of Thomas Moore. I regret that I am unable to 
remember them. 

One of the noblest — and, speaking of Fancy, one of the most 
singularly fanciful of modern poets, was Thomas Hood. His " Fair 
Ines" had always, for me, an inexpressible charm : 

saw ye not fair Ines ? 

She's gone into the "West, 
To dazzle when the sun is down, 

And rob the world of rest : 
She took our daylight with her, 

The smiles that we love best, 
With morning blushes on her cheek, 

And pearls upon her breast. 

turn again, fair Ines, 
Before the fall of night, 

For fear the moon should shine alone, 

And stars unrivall'd bright ; 
And blessed will the lover be 

That walks beneath their light, 
And breathes the love against thy cheek 

I dare not even write ! 

"Would I had been, fair Ines, 

That gallant cavalier, 
"Who rode so gaily by thy side, 

And whisper'd thee so near ! 
Were there no bonny dames at home, 

Or no true lovers here, 
That he should cross the seas to win 

The dearest of the dear ? 

1 saw thee, lovely Ines, 

Descend along the shore, 
With bands of noble gentlemen, 

And banners wav'd before ; 
And gentle youth and maidens gay, 

And snowy plumes they wore ; 
It would have been a beauteous dream, 

— If it had been no more ! 

Alas, alas, fair Ines, 

She went away with song, 
With Music waiting on her steps, 

And shoutings of the throng ; 
But some were sad and felt no mirth, 

But only Music's wrong, 
In sounds that sang Farewell, Farewell, 

To her you've loved so long. 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 



15 



Farewell, farewell, fair Ines, 

That vessel never bore 
So fair a lady on its deck, 

Nor danced so light before, — 
Alas for pleasure on the sea, 

And sorrow on the shore ! 
The smile that blest one lover's heart 

Has broken many more ! 

" The Haunted House," by the same author, is one of the truest 
poems ever written — one of the truest — one of the most unexcep- 
tionable — one of the most thoroughly artistic, both in its theme 
and in its execution. It is, moreover, powerfully ideal — imagina- 
tive. I regret that its length renders it unsuitable for the pur- 
poses of this Lecture. In place of it, permit me to offer the 
universally appreciated " Bridge of Sighs." 



One more Unfortunate, 
Weary of breath, 
Rashly importunate, 
Gone to her death ! 

Take her up tenderly, 

Lift her with care ; 

Fashion'd so slenderly, 
Young, and so fair ! 

Look at her garments 
Clinging like cerements ; 
Whilst the wave constantly 
Drips from her clothing ; 
Take her up instantly, 
Loving, not loathing. — 

Touch her not scornfully ; 
Think of her mournfully, 
Gently and humanly ; 
Not of the stains of her, 
All that remains of her 
Now, is pure womanly. 

Make no deep scrutiny 
Into her mutiny 
Rash and undutiful ; 
Past all dishonor, 
Death has left on her 
Only the beautiful. 

Still, for all slips of hers, 
One of Eve's family — 
Wipe those poor lips of hers 
Oozing so clammily. 



Loop up her tresses 
Escaped from the comb, 
Her fair auburn tresses ; 
Whilst wonderment guesses 
Where was her home ? 

Who was her father ? 
Who was her mother ? 
Had she a sister ? 
Had she a brother ? 
Or was there a dearer one 
Still, and a nearer one 
Yet, than all other ? 

Alas ! for the rarity 
Of Christian charity 
Under the" sun ! 
Oh ! it was pitiful ! 
Near a whole city full, 
Home she had none. 

Sisterly, brotherly, 
Fatherly, motherly, 
Feelings had changed: 
Love, by harsh evidence, 
Thrown from its eminence ; 
Even God's providence 
Seeming estranged. 

Where the lamps quiver 

So far in the river, 

With many a light 

From window and casement, 

From garret to basement, 

She stood, with amazement, 

Houseless by night. 



16 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 



The bleak wind of March 
Made her tremble and shiver ; 
But not the dark arch, 
Or the black flowing river : 
Mad from life's history, 
Glad to death's mystery, 
Swift to be hurl'd — 
Anywhere, anywhere 
Out of the world ! 

In she plunged boldly, 
No matter how coldly 
The rough river ran, — 
Over the brink of it, 
Picture it, — think of it, 
Dissolute Man ! 
Lave in it, drink of it 
Then, if you can ! 

Take her up tenderly, 
Lift her with care ; 
Fashion'd so slenderly, 
Young, and so fair ! 



Ere her limbs frigidly 
Stiffen too rigidly, 
Decently, — kindly, — 
Smooth, and compose them ; 
And her eyes, close them, 
Staring so blindly ! 

Dreadfully staring 
Through muddy impurity, 
As when with the daring 
Last look of despairing 
Fixed on futurity. 

Perishing gloomily, 
Spurred by contumely, 
Cold inhumanity, 
Burning insanity, 
Into her rest, — 
Cross her hands humbly, 
As if praying dumbly, 
Over her breast ! 
Owning her weakness, 
Her evil behavior, 
And leaving, with meekness, 
Her sins to her Savior ! 



The vigor of this poem is no less remarkable than its pathos. 
The versification, although carrying the fanciful to the very verge 
of the fantastic, is nevertheless admirably adapted to the wild 
insanity which is the thesis of the poem. 

Among the minor poems of Lord Byron, is one which has 
never received from the critics the praise which it undoubtedly 
deserves : 

Though the day of my destiny's over, 

And the star of my fate hath declined, 
Thy soft heart refused to discover 

The faults which so many could rind ; 
Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted, 

It shrunk not to share it with me, 
And the love which my spirit hath painted 

It never hath found but in thee. 



Then when nature around me is smiling, 

The last smile which answers to mine, 
I do not believe it beguiling, 

Because it reminds me of thine ; 
And when winds are at war with the ocean, 

As the breasts I believed in with me, 
If their billows excite an emotion, 

It ia that they bear me from thee. 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 17 

Though the rock of my last hope is shivered, 

And its fragments are sunk in the wave, 
Though I feel that my soul is delivered 

To pain — it shall not be its slave. 
There is many a pang to pursue me : 

They may crush, but they shall not contemn — 
They may torture, but shall not subdue me — 

'Tis of thee that I think — not of them. 

Though human, thou didst not deceive me, 

Though woman, thou didst not forsake, 
Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me, 

Though slandered, thou never couldst shake, — 
Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me, 

Though parted, it was not to fly, 
Though watchful, 't was not to defame me, 

Nor mute, that the world might belie. 

Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it, 

Nor the war of the many with one — 
If my soul was not fitted to prize it, 

'T was folly not sooner to shun : 
And if dearly that error hath cost me, 

An,d more than I once could foresee, 
I have found that whatever it lost me, 

It could not deprive me of thee. 

From the wreck of the past, which hath perished, 

Thus much I at least may recall, 
It hath taught me that which I most cherished 

Deserved to be dearest of all : 
In the desert a fountain is springing, 

In the wide waste there still is a tree, 
And a bird in the solitude singing, 

Which speaks to my spirit of thee. 

Although the rhythm, here, is one of the most difficult, the ver- 
sification could scarcely be improved. No nobler theme ever en- 
gaged the pen of poet. It is the soul-elevating idea, that no man 
can consider himself entitled to complain of Fate while, in his 
adversity, he still retains the unwavering love of woman. 

From Alfred Tennyson — although in perfect sincerity I regard 
him as the noblest poet that ever lived — I have left myself time 
to cite only a very brief specimen. I call him, and think him 
the noblest of poets — not because the impressions he produces are, 
at all times, the most profound — not because the poetical excite- 
ment which he induces is, at all times, the most intense — but be- 
cause it is, at all times, the most ethereal — in other words, the 
most elevating and the most pure. No poet is so little of the 



18 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 

earth, earthy. What I am about to read is from his last long 
poem, " The Princess :" 

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, 
Tears from the depth of some divine despair 
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, 
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields, 
And thinking of the days that are no more. 

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, 
That brings our friends up from the underworld, 
Sad as the last which reddens over one 
That sinks with all we love below the verge ; 
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. 

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns 
The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds 
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes 
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square ; 
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more. 

Dear as remember'd kisses after death, 
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd 
On lips that are for others ; deep as love, 
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret ; 
O Death in Life, the days that are no more. 

Thus, although in a very cursory and imperfect manner, I have 
endeavored to convey to you my conception of the Poetic Princi- 
ple. It has been my purpose to suggest that, while this Principle 
itself is, strictly and simply, the Human Aspiration for Supernal 
Beauty, the manifestation of the Principle is always found in an 
elevating excitement of the Soul — quite independent of that pas- 
sion which is the intoxication of the Heart — or of that Truth 
which is the satisfaction of the Reason. For, in regard to Pas- 
sion, alas ! its tendency is to degrade, rather than to elevate the 
Soul. Love, on the contrary — Love — the true, the divine Eros — 
the Uranian, as distinguished from the Dionsean Venus — is un- 
questionably the purest and truest of all poetical themes. And 
in regard to Truth — if, to be sure, through the attainment of a 
truth, we are led to perceive a harmony where none was apparent 
before, we experience, at once, the true poetical effect — but this 
effect is referable to the harmony alone, and not in the least de- 
gree to the truth which merely served to render the harmony 
manifest. 

We shall reach, however, more immediately a distinct concep- 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 19 

tion of what the true Poetry is, by mere reference to a few of the 
simple elements which induce in the Poet himself the true poeti- 
cal effect. He recognises the ambrosia which nourishes his soul, 
in the bright orbs that shine in Heaven — in the volutes of the 
flower — in the clustering of low shrubberies — in the waving of the 
grain-fields — in the slanting of tall, Eastern trees — in the blue dis- 
tance of mountains — in the grouping of clouds — in the twinkling 
of half-hidden brooks — in the gleaming of silver rivers — in the 
repose of sequestered lakes — in the star-mirroring depths of lonely 
wells. He perceives it in the songs of birds — in the harp of 
u^Eolus — in the sighing of the night-wind — in the repining voice 
of the forest — in the surf that complains to the shore — in the fresh 
breath of the woods — in the scent of the violet — in the voluptuous 
perfume of the hyacinth — in the suggestive odor that comes to 
him, at eventide, from far-distant, undiscovered islands, over dim 
oceans, illimitable and unexplored. He owns it in all noble 
thoughts — in all unworldly motives — in all holy impulses — in all 
chivalrous, generous, and self-sacrificing deeds. He feels it in the 
beauty of woman — in the grace of her step — in the lustre of her 
eye — in the melody of her voice — in her soft laughter — in her 
sigh — in the harmony of the rustling of her robes. He deeply 
feels it in her winning endearments — in her burning enthusiasms 
— in her gentle charities — in her meek and devotional endurances 
— but above all — ah, far above all — he kneels to it — he worships 
it in the faith, in the purity, in the strength, in the altogether 
divine majesty — of her love. 

Let me conclude — by the recitation of yet another brief poem — 
one very different in character from any that I have before 
quoted. It is by Motherwell, and is called " The Song of the Cav- 
alier." With our modern and altogether rational ideas of the 
absurdity and impiety of warfare, we are not precisely in that 
frame of mind best adapted to sympathize with the sentiments, 
and thus to appreciate the real excellence of the poem. To do 
this fully, we must identify ourselves, in fancy, with the soul of the 
old cavalier. 

Then mounte ! then mounte, brave gallants, all, 

And don your helmes amaine : 
Deathe's couriers, Fame and Honor, call 

Us to the field againe. 



20 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 

No shrewish teares shall fill our eye 

When the sword-hilt 's in our hand, — 
Heart-whole we'll part, and no whit sighe 

For the fayrest of the land ; 
Let piping swaine, and craven wight, 

Thus weepe and puling crye, 
Our business is like men to fight, 

And hero-like to die I 



OF CRITICISM— PUBLIC AND PRIVATE. 21 



OF CRITICISM-PUBLIC AND PRIVATE. 



[In 1846, Mr. Poe published in The Ladys Book a series of six articles, enti- 
tled " The Literati of New- York City," in which he professed to give 
" some honest opinions at random respecting their autorial merits, with 
occasional words of personality." The series was introduced by the fol- 
lowing paragraphs, and the personal sketches were given in the order in 

x which they are here reprinfed, from " George Bush" to " Richard Adams 
Locke." The qther notices of American and foreign writers, were con- 
tributed by Mr. Poe to various journals, chiefly in the last four or five 
years of his life.] 

In a criticism on Bryant I was at some pains in pointing out the 
distinction between the popular "opinion" of the merits of cotempo- 
rary authors, and that held and expressed of them in private literary 
society. The former species of " opinion" can be called " opinion" 
only by courtesy. It is the public's own, just as we consider a book 
our own when we have bought it. In general, this opinion is adopt- 
ed from the journals of the day, and I have endeavored to show that 
the cases are rare indeed in which these journals express any other 
sentiment about books than such as may be attributed directly or 
indirectly to the authors of the books. The most " popular," the 
most "successful" writers among us, (for a brief period, at least,) 
are, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, persons of mere address, 
perseverance, effrontery — in a word, busy-bodies, toadies, quacks. 
These people easily succeed in boring editors (whose attention is 
too often entirely^ engrossed by politics or other " business" mat- 
ter) into the admission of favorable notices written or caused to 
be written by interested parties — or, at least, into the admission 
of some notice where, under ordinary circumstances, no notice 
would be given at all. In this way ephemeral " reputations" are 



22 OF CRITICISM— PUBLIC AND PRIVATE. 

manufactured, which, for the most part, serve all the purposes de- 
signed — that is to say, the putting money into the purse of the 
quack and the quack's publisher ; for there never was a quack 
who could be brought to comprehend the value of mere fame. 
Now, men of genius will not resort to these manoeuvres, because 
genius involves in its very essence a scorn of chicanery ; and thus 
for a time the quacks always get the advantage of them, both in 
respect to pecuniary profit and what appears to be public esteem. 

There is another point of view, too. Your literary quacks 
court, in especial, the personal acquaintance of those " connected 
with the press." Now these latter, even when penning a volun- 
tary, that is to say, an uninstigated notice of the book of an ac- 
quaintance, feel as if writing not so much for the eye of the public 
as for the eye of the acquaintance, and the notice is fashioned 
accordingly. The bad points of the work are slurred over, and 
the good ones brought out into the best light, all this through a 
feeling akin to that which makes it unpleasant to speak ill of one 
to one's face. In the case of men of genius, editors, as a general 
rule, have no such delicacy — for the simple reason that, as a gen- 
eral rule, they have no acquaintance with these men of genius, a 
class proverbial for shunning society. 

But the very editors who hesitate at saying in print an ill word 
of an author personally known, are usually the most frank in 
speaking about him privately. In literary society, they seem bent 
upon avenging the wrongs self-inflicted upon their own con- 
sciences. Here, accordingly, the quack is treated as he deserves — 
even a little more harshly than he deserves — by way of striking 
a balance. True merit, on the same principle, is apt to be 
slightly overrated ; but, upon the whole, there is a close approxi- 
mation to absolute honesty of opinion ; and this honesty is 
farther secured by the mere trouble to which it puts one in 
conversation to model one's countenance to a falsehood. We 
place on paper without hesitation a tissue of flatteries, to which in 
society we could not give utterance, for our lives, without either 
blushing or laughing outright. 

For these reasons there exists a very remarkable discrepancy 
between the apparent public opinion of any given author's merits, 
and the opinion which is expressed of him orally by those who 



OF CRITICISM— PUBLIC AND PRIVATE. 23 

are best qualified to judge. For example, Mr. Hawthorne, the 
author of " Twice-Told Tales," is scarcely recognised by the press 
or by the public, and when noticed at all, is noticed merely to be 
damned by faint praise. Now, my own opinion of him is, that, 
although his walk is limited, and he is fairly to be charged with 
mannerism, treating all subjects in a similar tone of dreamy inu- 
endo, yet in this walk he evinces extraordinary genius, having no 
rival either in America or elsewhere — and this opinion I have 
never heard gainsaid by any one literary person in the country. 
That this opinion, however, is a spoken and not a written one, is 
referable to the facts, first, that Mr. Hawthorne is a poor man, 
and, second, that he is not an ubiquitous quack. 

Again, of Mr. Longfellow, who, although a little quacky per se, 
has, through his social and literary position as a man of property 
and a professor at Harvard, a whole legion of active quacks at his 
control — of him what is the apparent popular opinion ? Of 
course, that he 'is a poetical phenomenon, as entirely without fault, 
as is the luxurious paper upon which his poems are invariably 
borne to the public eye. In private society he is regarded with 
one voice as a poet of far more than usual ability, a skilful artist 
and a well-read man, but as less remarkable in either capacity 
than as a determined imitator and a dexterous adapter of the ideas 
of other people. For years I have conversed with no literary 
person who did not entertain precisely these ideas of Professor L. ; 
and, in fact, on all literary topics, there is in society a seemingly 
wonderful coincidence of opinion. The author accustomed to se- 
clusion, and mingling for the first time with those who have been 
associated with him only through their works, is astonished and 
delighted at finding common to all whom he meets, conclusions 
which he had blindly fancied were attained by himself alone, and 
in opposition to the judgment of mankind. 

In the series of papers which I now propose, my design is, in 
giving my own unbiased opinion of the literati (male and female) 
of New York, to give at the same time very closely, if not with 
absolute accuracy, that of conversational society in literary circles. 
It must be expected, of course, that, in innumerable particulars - , I 
shall differ from the voice, that is to say, from what appears to 



24 GEORGE BUSH. 



be the voice of the public — but this is a matter of no consequence 
whatever. 

New York literature may be taken as a fair representation of 
that of the country at large. The city itself is the focus of Amer- 
ican letters. Its authors include, perhaps, one-fourth of all in 
America, and the influence they exert on their brethren, if seem- 
ingly silent, is not the less extensive and decisive. As I shall 
have to speak of many individuals, my limits will not permit me 
to speak of them otherwise than in brief; but this brevity will be 
merely consistent with the design, which is that of simple opinion, 
with little of either argument or detail. With one or two excep- 
tions, I am well acquainted with every author to be introduced, 
and I shall avail myself of the acquaintance to convey, generally, 
some idea of the personal appearance of all who, in this regard, 
would be likely to interest my readers. As any precise order or 
arrangement seems unnecessary and may be inconvenient, I shall 
maintain none. It will be understood that, without reference to 
supposed merit or demerit, each individual is introduced absolutely 
at random. 



GEORGE BUSH. 



The Rev. George Bush is Professor of Hebrew in the Uni- 
versity of New York, and has long been distinguished for the ex- 
tent and variety of his attainments in oriental literature ; indeed, 
as an oriental linguist, it is probable that he has no equal among 
us. He has published a great deal, and his books have always 
the good fortune to attract attention throughout the civilized 
world. His " Treatise on the Millenium" is, perhaps, that of his 
earlier compositions by which he is most extensively as well as 
most favorably known. Of late days he has created a singular 
commotion in the realm of theology, by his " Anastasis, or the 
Doctrine of the Resurrection : in which it is shown that the Doc- 
trine of the Resurrection of the Body is not sanctioned by Reason 
or Revelation." This work has been zealously attacked, and as 
zealously defended by the professor and his friends. There can 
be no doubt that, up to this period, the Bushites have had the 






GEORGE BUSH. 25 



best of the battle. The " Anastasis" is lucidly, succinctly, vigor- 
ously, and logically written, and proves, in my opinion, every- 
thing that it attempts — provided we admit the imaginary axioms 
from which it starts ; and this is as much as can be well said of 
any theological disquisition under the sun. It might be hinted, 
too, in reference as well to Professor Bush as to his opponents, 
"que laplupart des sectes ont raison dans une bonne partie de ce 
qu'elles avancent, mais non pas en ce qu'elles nient." A subse- 
quent work on " The Soul," by the author of " Anastasis/' has 
made nearly as much noise as the " Anastasis" itself. 

Taylor, who wrote so ingeniously " The Natural History of En- 
thusiasm," might have derived many a valuable hint from the 
study of Professor Bush. No man is more ardent in his theories ; 
and these latter are neither few nor commonplace. He is a Mes- 
merist and a Swedenborgian — has lately been engaged in editing 
Swedenborg's works, publishing them in numbers. He converses 
with fervor, and often with eloquence. Very probably he will 
establish an independent church. 

He is one of the most amiable men in the world, universally 
respected and beloved. His frank, unpretending simplicity of 
demeanor, is especially winning. 

In person he is tall, nearly six feet, and spare, with large bones. 
His countenance expresses rather benevolence and profound earn- 
estness, than high intelligence. The eyes are piercing ; the other 
features, in general, massive. The forehead, phrenologically, indi- 
cates causality and comparison, with deficient ideality — the organ- 
ization which induces strict logicality from insufficient premises. 
He walks with a slouching gait and with an air of abstraction. 
His dress is exceedingly plain. In respect to the arrangement 
about his study, he has many of the Magliabechian habits. He 
is, perhaps, fifty-five years of age, and seems to enjoy good 
health. 

Vol. III.— 2 



25 GEORGE H. COLTON. 



GEORGE H. COLTON. 

Mr. Colton is noted as the author of " Tecumseh," and as 
the originator and editor of " The American Review," a Whig 
magazine of the higher (that is to say, of the five dollar) class. I 
must not be understood as meaning any disrespect to the work. 
It is, in my opinion, by far the best of its order in this country, 
and is supported in the way of contribution by many of the very 
noblest intellects. Mr. Colton, if in nothing else, has shown him- 
self a man of genius in his successful establishment of the maga- 
zine within so brief a period. It is now commencing its second 
year, and I can say, from my own personal knowledge, that its 
circulation exceeds two thousand — it is probably about two thou- 
sand five hundred. So marked and immediate a success has 
never been attained by any of our five dollar magazines, with the 
exception of " The Southern Literary Messenger," which, in the 
course of nineteen months, (subsequent to the seventh from its 
commencement,) attained a circulation of rather more than five 
thousand. 

I cannot conscientiously call Mr. Colton a good editor, although 
I think that he will finally be so. He improves wonderfully with 
experience. His present defects ardHimidity and a lurking taint 
of partiality, amounting to positive prejudice (in the vulgar sense) 
for the literature of the Puritans. I do not think, however, that 
he is at all aware of such prepossession. His taste is rather un- 
exceptionable than positively good. He has not, perhaps, suffi- 
cient fire within himself to appreciate it in others. Nevertheless, 
he endeavors to do so, and in this endeavor is not inapt to take 
opinions at secondhand — to adopt, I mean, the opinions of others. 
He is nervous, and a very trifling difficulty disconcerts him, with- 
out getting the better of a sort of dogged perseverance, which 
will make a thoroughly successful man of him in the end. He 
is (classically) well educated. 

As a poet he. has done better things than " Tecumseh," in 
whose length he has committed a radical and irreparable error, 
sufficient in itself to destroy a far better book. Some portions of 
it are truly poetical ; very many portions belong to a high order 



N. P. WILLIS. 27 



of eloquence ; it is invariably well versified, and has no glaring 
defects, but, upon the whole, is insufferably tedious. Some of the 
author's shorter compositions, published anonymously in his maga- 
zine, have afforded indications even of genius. 

Mr. Colton is marked in his personal appearance. He is proba- 
bly not more than thirty, but an air of constant thought (with a 
pair of spectacles) causes him to seem somewhat older. He is 
about five feet eight or nine in height, and fairly proportioned — 
neither stout nor thin. His forehead is quite intellectual. His 
mouth has a peculiar expression difficult to describe. Hair light 
and generally in disorder. He converses fluently, and, upon the 
whole, well, but grandiloquently, and with a tone half tragical 
half pulpital. 

In character he is in the highest degree estimable, a most sin- 
cere, high-minded, and altogether honorable man. He is un- 
married. 



N. P. WILLIS 



Whatever may be thought of Mr. Willis's talents, there can 
be no doubt about the fact that, both as an author and as a man, 
he has made a good deal of noise in the world — at least for an 
American. His literary life, in especial, has been one continual 
emeute ; but then his literary character is modified or impelled in 
a very remarkable degree by his personal one. His success (for 
in point of fame, if of nothing else, he has certainly been success- 
ful) is to be attributed, one-third to his mental ability and two- 
thirds to his physical temperament — the latter goading him into 
the accomplishment of what the former merely gave him the 
means of accomplishing. 

At a very early age Mr. Willis seems to have arrived at an un- 
derstanding that, in a republic such as ours, the mere man of 
letters must ever be a cipher, and endeavored, accordingly, to 
unite the eclat of the litterateur with that of the man of fashion 
or of society. He " pushed himself," went much into the world, 
made friends with the gentler sex, "delivered" poetical addresses, 
wrote "scriptural" poems, travelled, sought the intimacy of noted 



28 N. P. WILLIS. 



women, and got into quarrels with notorious men. All these 
things served his purpose — if, indeed, I am right in supposing 
that he had any purpose at all. It is quite probable that, as be- 
fore hinted, he acted only in accordance with his physical tem- 
perament ; but, be this as it may, his personal greatly advanced, 
if it did not altogether establish his literary fame. I have often 
carefully considered whether, without the physique of which I 
speak, there is that in the absolute morale of Mr. Willis which 
would have earned him reputation as a man of letters, and my 
conclusion is, that he could not have failed to become noted in 
some degree under almost any circumstances, but that about two- 
thirds (as above stated) of his appreciation by the public should 
be attributed to those adventures which grew immediately out of 
his animal constitution. 

He received what is usually regarded as a " good education " — 
that is to say, he graduated at college ; but his education, in the 
path he pursued, was worth to him, on account of his extraor- 
dinary savoir /aire, fully twice as much as would have been its 
value in any common case. No man's knowledge is more availa- 
ble, no man has exhibited greater tact in the seemingly casual 
display of his wares. With him, at least, a little learning is no 
dangerous thing. He possessed at one time, I believe, the aver- 
age quantum of American collegiate lore — " a little Latin and less 
Greek," a smattering of physical and metaphysical science, and 
(I should judge) a very little of the mathematics — but all this 
must be considered as mere guess on my part. Mr. Willis speaks 
French with some fluency, and Italian not quite so well. 

Within the ordinary range of belles lettres authorship, he has 
evinced much versatility. If called on to designate him by any 
general literary title, I might term him a magazinist — for his 
compositions have invariably the species of effect, with the brevity 
which the magazine demands. We may view him as a para- 
graphist, an essayist, or rather " sketcher," a tale writer, and a 
poet. 

In the first capacity he fails. His points, however good when 
deliberately wrought, are too recherches to be put hurriedly before 
the public eye. Mr. W. has by no means the readiness which the 
editing a newspaper demands. He composes (as did Addison, 



N. P. WILLIS. 29 



and as do many of the most brilliant and seemingly dashing 
writers of the present day,) with great labor and frequent erasure 
and interlineation. His MSS., in this regard, present a very sin- 
gular appearance, and indicate the vacillation which is, perhaps, 
the leading trait of his character. A newspaper, too, in its longer 
articles — its " leaders " — very frequently demands argumentation, 
and here Mr. W. is remarkably out of his element. His exuber- 
ant fancy leads him over hedge and ditch — anywhere from the 
main road ; and, besides, he is far too readily self-dispossessed. 
With time at command, however, his great tact stands him in- 
stead of all argumentative power, and enables him to overthrow 
an antagonist without permitting the latter to see how he is over- 
thrown. A fine example of this "management" is to be found 
in Mr. W.'s reply to a very inconsiderate attack upon his social 
standing, made by one of the editors of the New York " Courier 
and Inquirer." I have always regarded this reply as the highest 
evidence of its author's ability, as a masterpiece of ingenuity, if 
not of absolute genius. The skill of the whole lay in this — that, 
without troubling himself to refute the charges themselves brought 
against him by Mr. Raymond, he put forth his strength in ren- 
dering them null, to all intents and purposes, by obliterating, 
incidentally and without letting his design be perceived, all the 
impression these charges were calculated to convey. But this re- 
ply can be called a newspaper article only on the ground of its 
having appeared in a newspaper. 

As a writer of "sketches," properly so called, Mr. Willis is un- 
equalled. Sketches — especially of society — are his forte, and they 
are so for no other reason than that they afford Mm the best op- 
portunity of introducing the personal Willis — or, more distinctly, 
because this species of composition is most susceptible of im- 
pression from his personal character. The degage tone of this 
kind of writing, too, best admits and entourages that fancy which 
Mr. W. possesses in the most extraordinary degree ; it is in fancy 
that he reigns supreme : this, more than any one other quality, 
and, indeed, more than all his other literary qualities combined, 
has made him what he is. It is this which gives him the origi- 
nality, the freshness, the point, the piquancy, which appear to be 



30 N. P. WILLIS. 



the immediate, but which are, in fact, the mediate sources of his 
popularity.* 

* As, by metaphysicians and in ordinary discourse, the word fancy is 
used with very little determinateness of meaning, I may be pardoned for re- 
peating here what I have elsewhere said on this topic. I shall thus be saved 
much misapprehension in regard to the term — one which will necessarily be 
often employed in the course of this series. 

" Fancy," says the author of " Aids to Reflection," (who aided reflection to 
much better purpose in his " Genevieve ") — " fancy combines — imagination 
creates." This was intended and has been received as a distinction, but it is 
a distinction without a difference — without a difference even of degree. The 
fancy as nearly creates as the imagination, and neither at all. Novel con- 
ceptions are merely unusual combinations. The mind of man can imagine 
nothing which does not really exist ; if it could, it would create not only 
ideally but substantially, as do the thoughts of God. It may be said, " We 
imagine a griffin, yet a griffin does not exist." Not the griffin, certainly, but 
its component parts. It is no more than a collation of known limbs, features, 
qualities. Thus with all which claims to be new, which appears to be a - 
creation of the intellect — all is re-soluble into the old. The wildest effort of 
the mind cannot stand the test of this analysis. 

Imagination, fancy, fantasy, and humor, have in common the elements 
combination and novelty. The imagination is the artist of the four. From 
novel arrangements of old forms which present themselves to it, it selects 
such only as are harmonious ; the result, of course, is beauty itself — using the 
word in its most extended sense and as inclusive of the sublime. The pure 
imagination chooses, from either beauty or deformity, only the most combina- 
ble things hitherto uncombined ; the compound, as a general rule, partaking 
in character of sublimity or beauty in the ratio of the respective sublimity 
or beauty of the things combined, which are themselves still to be considered 
as atomic — that is to say, as previous combinations. But, as often analo- 
gously happens in physical chemistry, so not unfrequently does it occur in 
this chemistry of*fhe intellect, that the admixture of two elements will re- 
sult in a something that shall have nothing of the quality of one of them — 
or even nothing of the qualities of either. The range of imagination is thus 
unlimited. Its materials extend throughout the universe. Even out of de- 
formities it fabricates that beauty which is at once its sole object and its in- 
evitable test. But, in genefbl, the richness of the matters combined, the 
facility of discovering combinable novelties worth combining, and the abso- 
lute " chemical combination " of the completed mass, are the particulars to 
be regarded in our estimate of imagination. It is this thorough harmony of 
an imaginative work which so often causes it to be undervalued by the un- 
discriminating, through the character of obviousness which is superinduced. 
We are apt to find ourselves asking why it is that these combinations have 
never been imagined before ? 






N. P. WILLIS. 31 



In tales (written with deliberation for the magazines) he has 
shown greater constructiveness than I should have given him 
credit for had I not read his compositions of this order — for in 
this faculty all his other works indicate a singular deficiency. The 
chief charm even of these tales, however, is still referable to fancy. 

As a poet, Mr. Willis is not entitled, I think, to so high a rank 
as he may justly claim through his prose ; and this for the reason 
that, although fancy is not inconsistent with any of the demands 
of those classes of prose composition which he has attempted, 
and, indeed, is a vital element of most of them, still it is at war 
(as will be understood from what I have said in the foot note) 
with that purity and perfection of beauty which are the soul of 
the poem proper. I wish to be understood as saying this gener- 
ally of our author's poems. In some instances, seeming to feel 
the truth of my proposition, (that fancy should have no place in 
the loftier poesy,) he has denied it a place, as in " Melanie," and 
his Scriptural pieces ; but, unfortunately, he has been unable to 
supply the void with the true imagination, and these poems con- 
sequently are deficient in vigor, in stamen. The Scriptural pieces 

Now, when this question does not occur, when the harmony of the com- 
bination is comparatively neglected, and when, in addition to the element of 
novelty, there is introduced the sub-element of unexpectedness — when, for 
example, matters are brought into combination which not only have never 
been combined, but whose combination strikes us as a difficulty happily over- 
come, the result then appertains to the fancy, and is, to the majority of man- 
kind, more grateful than the purely harmonious one — although, absolutely, 
it is less beautiful (or grand) for the reason that it is less harmonious. 

Carrying its errors into excess — for, however enticing, they are errors still, 
or nature lies — fancy is at length found infringing upon the province of fan- 
tasy. The votaries of this latter delight not only in novelty and unexpected- 
ness of combination, but in the avoidance of proportion. The result is, 
therefore, abnormal, and, to a healthy mind, affords less of pleasure through 
its novelty than of pain through its incoherence. When, proceeding a step 
farther, however, fancy seeks not merely disproportionate but incongruous or 
antagonistic elements, the effect is rendered more pleasurable by its greater 
positiveness, there is a merry effort of truth to shake from her that which is 
no property of hers, and we laugh outright in recognising humor. 

The four faculties in question seems to me all of their class ; but when 
either fancy or humor is expressed to gain an end, is pointed at a purpose — 
whenever either becomes objective in place of subjective, then it becomes, 
also, pure wit or sarcasm, just as the purpose is benevolent or malevolent. 



32 N. P. WILLIS. 



are quite " correct," as the French have it, and are much admired 
by a certain set of readers, who judge of a poem, not by its ef- 
fect on themselves, but by the effect which they imagine it might 
have upon themselves were they not unhappily soulless, and by 
the effect which they take it for granted it does have upon others. 
It cannot be denied, however, that these pieces are, in general, 
tame, or indebted for what force they possess to the Scriptural 
passages of which they are merely paraphrastic. I quote what, 
in my own opinion, and in that of nearly all my friends, is really 
the truest poem ever written by Mr. Willis. 

The shadows lay along Broadway, 

'Twas near the twilight tide, 
And slowly there a lady fair 

Was walking in her pride — 
Alone walked she, yet viewlessly 

Walked spirits at her side. 

Peace charmed the street beneath her feet, 

And honor charmed the air, 
And all astir looked kind on her 

And called her good as fair — 
For all God ever gave to her 

She kept with chary care. 

She kept with care her beauties rare 

From lovers warm and true, 
For her heart was cold to all but gold, 

And the rich came not to woo. 
Ah, honored well are charms to sell 

When priests the selling do ! 

Now, walking there was one more fair — 

A slight girL lily-pale, 
And she had unseen company 

To make the spirit quail — 
'Twixt want and scorn she walked forlorn, 

And nothing could avail. 

No mercy now can clear her brow 

For this world's peace to pray — 
For, as love's wild prayer dissolved in air, 

Her woman's heart gave way ; 
And the sin forgiven by Christ in heaven 

By man is cursed alway. 

There is about this little poem (evidently written in haste and 
through impulse) a true imagination. Its grace, dignity and pa- 
thos are impressive, and there is more in it of earnestness, of soul, 



N. P. WILLIS. 



than in anything I have seen from the pen of its author. His 
compositions, in general, have a taint of worldliness, of insincerity. 
The identical rhyme in the last stanza is very noticeable, and the 
whole finale is feeble. It would be improved by making the last 
two lines precede the first two of the stanza. 

In classifying Mr. W.'s writings I did not think it worth while 
to speak of him as a dramatist, because, although he has written 
plays, what they have of merit is altogether in their character of 
poem. Of his " Bianca Visconti " I have little to say ; — it de- 
served to fail, and did, although it abounded in eloquent passages. 
" Tortesa " abounded in the same, but had a great many dramatic 
points well calculated to tell with a conventional audience. Its 
characters, with the exception of Tomaso, a drunken buffoon, had 
no character at all, and the plot was a tissue of absurdities, incon- 
sequences and inconsistencies ; yet I cannot help thinking it, upon 
the whole, the best play ever written by an American. 

Mr. Willis has made very few attempts at criticism, and those 
few (chiefly newspaper articles) have not impressed me with a 
high idea of his analytic abilities, although with a very high idea 
of his taste and discrimination. 

His style proper may be called extravagant, bizarre, pointed, 
epigrammatic without being antithetical, (this is very rarely the 
case,) but, through all its whimsicalities, graceful, classic and ac- 
curate. He is very seldom to be caught tripping in the minor 
morals. His English is correct ; his most outrageous imagery is, 
at all events, unmixed. 

Mr. Willis's career has naturally made him enemies among the 
envious host of dunces whom he has outstripped in the race for 
fame ; and these his personal manner (a little tinctured with re- 
serve, brusquerie, or even haughtiness) is by no means adapted to 
conciliate. He has innumerable warm friends, however, and is 
himself a warm friend. He is impulsive, generous, bold, impet- 
uous, vacillating, irregularly energetic — apt to be hurried into 
error, but incapable of deliberate wrong. 

He is yet young, and, without being handsome, in the ordinary 

sense, is a remarkably well looking man. In height he is, perhaps, 

five feet eleven, and justly proportioned. His figure is put in the best 

light by the ease and assured grace of his carriage His whole person 

2 # 



34 WILLIAM L. GILLESPIE. 

and personal demeanor bear about them the traces of "good society." 
His face is somewhat too full, or rather heavy, in its lower por- 
tions. Neither his nose nor his forehead can be defended ; the 
latter would puzzle phrenology. His eyes are a dull bluish gray, 
and small. His hair is of a rich brown, curling naturally and 
luxuriantly. His mouth is well cut ; the teeth fine ; the expres- 
sion of the smile intellectual and winning. He converses little, 
well rather than fluently, and in a subdued tone. The portrait 
of him published about three years ago in " Graham's Magazine," 
conveys by no means so true an idea of the man as does the 
sketch (by Lawrence) inserted as frontispiece to a late collection 
of his poems. 



WILLIAM M. GILLESPIE. 

Mr. William M. Gillespie aided Mr. Park Benjamin, 1 be- 
lieve, some years ago, in the editorial conduct of "The New 
World," and has been otherwise connected with the periodical 
press of New York. He is more favorably known, however, as 
the author of a neat volume entitled " Rome as Seen by a New 
Yorker," — a good title to a good book. The endeavor to convey 
Rome only by those impressions which would naturally be made 
upon an American, gives the work a certain air of originality — 
the rarest of all qualities in descriptions of the Eternal City. 
The style is pure and sparkling, although occasionally flippant and 
dilletantesque. The love of remark is much in the usual way — 
selon les regies — never very exceptionable, and never very pro- 
found. 

Mr. Gillespie is not unaccomplished, converses readily on many 
topics, has some knowledge of Italian, French, and, I believe, of 
the classical tongues, with such proficiency in the mathematics 
as has obtained for him a professorship of civil engineering at 
Union College, Schenectady. 

In character he has much general amiability, is warm-hearted, 
excitable, nervous. His address is somewhat awkward, but " in- 
sinuating " from its warmth and vivacity. Speaks continuously 
and rapidly, with a lisp which, at times, is by no means unpleas- 



i 



CHARLES F. BRIGGS. 85 

ing ; is fidgety, and never knows how to sit or to stand, or what 
to do with his hands and feet, or his hat. In the street walks 
irregularly, mutters to himself, and, in general, appears in a state 
of profound abstraction. 

In person he is about five feet seven inches high, neither stout 
nor thin, angularly proportioned ; eyes large and dark hazel, hair 
dark and curling, an ill-formed nose, fine teeth, and a smile of 
peculiar sweetness ; nothing remarkable about the forehead. The 
general expression of the countenance when in repose is rather 
unprepossessing, but animation very much alters its character. 
He is probably thirty years of age — unmarried. 



CHARLES F. BRIGGS. 

Mr. Briggs is better known as Harry Franco, a nom de plume 
assumed since the publication, in the " Knickerbocker Magazine," 
of his series of papers called " Adventures of Harry Franco." He 
also wrote for " The Knickerbocker " some articles entitled " The 
Haunted Merchant," which have been printed since as a novel, 
and from time to time subsequently has been a contributor to that 
journal. The two productions just mentioned have some merit. 
They depend for their effect upon the relation in a straightforward 
manner, just as one would talk, of the most commonplace events — - 
a kind of writing which, to ordinary, and especially to indolent 
intellects, has a very observable charm. To cultivated or to ac- 
tive minds it is in an equal degree distasteful, even when claiming 
the merit of originality. Mr. Briggs's manner, however, is an ob- 
vious imitation of Smollett, and, as usual with all imitation, pro- 
duces an unfavorable impression upon those conversant with the 
original. It is a common failing, also, with imitators, to out- 
Herod Herod in aping the peculiarities of the model, and too 
frequently the faults are more pertinaciously exaggerated than 
the merits. Thus, the author of " Harry Franco " carries the 
simplicity of Smollett sometimes to insipidity, and his picturesque 
low-life is made to degenerate into sheer vulgarity. 

If Mr. Briggs has a forte, it is a Flemish fidelity that omits 



CHARLES F. BRIGGS. 



nothing, whether agreeable or disagreeable ; but I cannot call this 
forte a virtue. He has also some humor, but nothing of an origi- 
nal character. Occasionally he has written good things. A mag- 
azine article, called " Dobbs and his Cantelope," was quite easy 
and clever in its way ; but the way is necessarily a small one. 
And I ought not to pass over without some allusion to it, his 
satirical novel of " Tom Pepper." As a novel, it really has not 
the slightest pretensions. To a genuine artist in literature, he is 
as Plumbe to Sully. Plumbe's daguerreotypes have more fidelity 
than any portrait ever put on canvass, and so Briggs's sketches of 
E. A. Duyckinck (Tibbings) and the author of Puffer Hopkins 
(Ferocious) are as lifelike as any portraits in words that have ever 
been drawn. But the subjects are little and mean, pretending and 
vulgar. Mr. Briggs would not succeed in delineating a gentleman. 
And some letters of his in Hiram Fuller's paper — perhaps for the 
reason that they run through a desert of stupidity — some letters of 
his, I say, under the apt signature of " Ferdinand Mendoza Pinto," 
are decidedly clever as examples of caricature — absurd, of course, 
but sharply absurd, so that, with a knowledge of their design, one 
could hardly avoid occasional laughter. I once thought Mr. 
Briggs could cause laughter only by his efforts at a serious kind 
of writing. 

In connexion with Mr. John Bisco, he was the originator of the 
late " Broadway Journal " — my editorial association with that 
work not having commenced until the sixth or seventh number, 
although I wrote for it occasionally from the first. Among the 
principal papers contributed by Mr. B., were those discussing the 
paintings at the preceding exhibition of the Academy of Fine Arts 
in New York. I may be permitted to say, that there was scarcely 
a point in his whole series of criticisms on this subject at which I 
did not radically disagree with him. Whatever taste he has in 
art is, like his taste in letters, Flemish. There is a portrait painter 
for whom he has an unlimited admiration. The unfortunate gen- 
tleman is Mr. Page. 

Mr. Briggs is about five feet six inches in height, somewhat 
slightly framed, with a sharp, thin face, narrow forehead, nose 
sufficiently prominent, mouth rather pleasant in expression, eyes 
not so good, gray and small, although occasionally brilliant. In 



WILLIAM KIRKLAND. S7 

dress lie is apt to affect the artist, felicitating himself especially 
upon his personal acquaintance with artists and his general con- 
noisseurship. He walks with a quick, nervous step. His address 
is quite good, frank and insinuating. His conversation has now 
and then the merit of humor, and more frequently of a smartness, 
allied to wit, but he has a perfect mania for contradiction, and it 
is sometimes impossible to utter an uninterrupted sentence in his 
hearing. He has much warmth of feeling, and is not a person to 
be disliked, although very apt to irritate and annoy. Two of his 
most marked characteristics are vacillation of purpose and a pas- 
sion for being mysterious. He has, apparently, travelled ; has 
some knowledge of French ; has been engaged in a variety of em- 
ployments ; and now, I believe, occupies a lawyer's office in Nas- 
sau-street. He is from Cape Cod or Nantucket, is married, and is 
the centre of a little circle of rather intellectual people, of which 
the Kirklands, Lowell, and some other notabilities are honorary 
members. He goes little into general society, and seems about 
forty years of age. 



WILLIAM KIRKLAND. 

Mr. William Kirkland — husband of the author of " A New 
Home" — has written much for the magazines, but has made no 
collection of his works. A series of " Letters from Abroad" have 
been among his most popular compositions. He was in Europe 
for some time, and is well acquainted with the French language 
and literature, as also with the German. He aided Dr. Turner in 
the late translation of Von Raumer's " America," published by the 
Langleys. One of his best magazine papers appeared in " The 
Columbian" — a review of the London Foreign Quarterly for April, 
1844. The 'arrogance, ignorance, and self-glorification of the 
Quarterly, with its gross injustice towards everything un-British, 
were severely and palpably exposed, and its narrow malignity 
shown to be especially mal-a-propos in a journal exclusively de- 
voted to foreign concerns, and therefore presumably imbued with 



88 JOHN W. FRANCIS. 



something of a cosmopolitan spirit. An article on " English and 
American Monthlies" in Godey's Magazine, and one entitled " Our 
English Visitors," in " The Columbian," have also been extensively 
read and admired. A valuable essay on " The Tyranny of Public 
Opinion in the United States," (published in " The Columbian" 
for December, 1845,) demonstrates the truth of Jefferson's asser- 
tion, that in this country, which has set the world an example of 
physical liberty, the inquisition of popular sentiment overrules in 
practice the freedom asserted in theory by the laws. " The West, 
the Paradise of the Poor," and " The United States' Census for 
1830," the former in "The Democratic Review," the latter in 
" Hunt's Merchants' Magazine," with sundry essays in the daily 
papers, complete the list of Mr. Kirkland's works. It will be seen 
that he has written little, but that little is entitled to respect for 
its simplicity, and the evidence which it affords of scholarship and 
diligent research. Whatever Mr. Kirkland does is done carefully. 
He is occasionally very caustic, but seldom without cause. His 
style is vigorous,, precise, and, notwithstanding his foreign acquire- 
ments, free from idiomatic peculiarities. 

Mr. Kirkland is beloved by all who know him ; in character 
mild, unassuming, benevolent, yet not without becoming energy 
at times ; in person rather short and slight ; features indistinctive ; 
converses well and zealously, although his hearing is defective. 



JOHN ¥. FRANCIS. 

Doctor Francis, although by no means a litterateur, cannot 
well be omitted in an account of the New York literati. In his 
capacity of physician and medical lecturer, he is far too well 
known to need comment. He was the pupil, friend and partner 
of Hossack — the pupil of Abernethy — connected in some manner 
with everything that has been well said or done medicinally in 
America. As a medical essayist he has always commanded the 
highest respect and attention. Among the points he has made 
at various times, I may mention his Anatomy of Drunkenness, 
his views of the Asiatic Cholera, his analysis of the Avon waters 
of the state, his establishment of the comparative immunity of tha 



JOHN W. FRANCIS. 39 



constitution from a second attack of yellow fever, and bis patholo- 
gical propositions on the changes wrought in the system by spe- 
cific poisons through their assimilation — propositions remarkably 
sustained and enforced by recent discoveries of Liebig. 

In unprofessional letters Doctor Francis has also accomplished 
much, although necessarily in a discursive manner. His biogra- 
phy of Chancellor Livingston, his Horticultural Discourse, his Dis- 
course at the opening of the new hall of the New York Lyceum 
of Natural History, are (each in its way) models of fine writing, 
just sufficiently toned down by an indomitable common sense. I 
had nearly forgotten to mention his admirable sketch of the per- 
sonal associations of Bishop Berkley, of Newport. 

Doctor Francis is one of the old spirits of the New York His- 
torical Society. His philanthropy, his active, untiring beneficence, 
will for ever render his name a household word among the truly 
Christian of heart. His professional services and his purse are 
always at the command of the needy ; few of our wealthiest men 
have ever contributed to the relief of distress so bountifully — none 
certainly with greater readiness or with warmer sympathy. 

His person and manner are richly peculiar. He is short and 
stout, probably five feet eight in height, limbs of great muscularity 
and strength, the whole frame indicating prodigious vitality and 
energy — the latter is, in fact, the leading trait in his character. 
His head is large, massive — the features in keeping ; complexion 
dark florid ; eyes piercingly bright ; mouth exceedingly mobile 
and expressive ; hair gray, and worn in matted locks about the 
neck and shoulders — eyebrows to correspond, jagged and ponder- 
ous. His age is about fifty-eight. His general appearance is 
such as to arrest attention. 

His address is the most genial that can be conceived, its bon- 
hommie irresistible. He speaks in a loud, clear, hearty tone, dog- 
matically, with his head thrown back and his chest out ; never 
waits for an introduction to anybody ; slaps a perfect stranger on 
the back and calls him " Doctor" or " Learned Theban ;" pats 
every lady on the head, and (if she be pretty and petite) desig- 
nates her by some such title as " My Pocket Edition of the Lives 
of the Saints." His conversation proper is a sort of Roman punch 
made up of tragedy, comedy, and the broadest of all possible farce. 



40 ANNA CORA MOWATT. 

He has a natural, felicitous flow of talk, always overswelling its 
boundaries and sweeping everything before it right and left. He 
is very earnest, intense, emphatic ; thumps the table with his fist ; 
shocks the nerves of the ladies. His forte, after all, is humor, the 
richest conceivable — a compound of Swift, Rabelais, and the clown 
in the pantomime. He is married. 



ANNA CORA MOWATT. 

Mrs. Mow att is in some respects a remarkable woman, and 
has undoubtedly wrought a deeper impression upon the public 
than any one of her sex in America. 

She became first known through her recitations. To these she 
drew large and discriminating audiences in Boston, New York, 
and elsewhere to the north and east. Her subjects were much in 
the usual way of these exhibitions, including comic as well as 
serious pieces, chiefly in verse. In her selections she evinced no 
very refined taste, but was probably influenced by the elocutionary 
rather than by the literary value of her programmes. She read 
well ; her voice was melodious ; her youth and general appear- 
ance excited interest, but, upon the whole, she produced no great 
effect, and the enterprise may be termed unsuccessful, although the 
press, as is its wont, spoke in the most sonorous tone of her success. 

It was during these recitations that her name, prefixed to occa- 
sional tales, sketches and brief poems in the magazines, first attract- 
ed an attention that, but for the recitations, it might not have 
attracted. 

Her sketches and tales may be said to be cleverly written. Thev 
are lively, easy, conventional, scintillating with a species of sarcastic 
wit, which might be termed good were it in any respect original. 
In point of style — that is to say, of mere English, they are very re- 
spectable. One of the best of her prose papers is entitled "Ennui 
and its Antidote," published in "The Columbian Magazine" for 
June, 1 845. The subject, however, is an exceedingly hackneyed one. 

In looking carefully over her poems, I find no one entitled to 
commendation as a whole ; in very few of them do I observe even 
noticeable passages, and I confess that I am surprised and disap- 



ANNA CORA MO WATT. 41 

pointed at this result of my inquiry; nor can I make up my mind 
that there is not much latent poetical power in Mrs. Movvatt. 

From some lines addressed to Isabel M , I copy the opening 

stanza as the most favorable specimen which I have seen of her 
verse. 

Forever vanished from thy cheek 

Is life's unfolding rose — 
Forever quenched the flashing smile 

That conscious beauty knows ! 
Thine orbs are lustrous with a light 

Which ne'er illumes the eye 
Till heaven is bursting on the sight 

And earth is fleeting by." 

In this there is much force, and the idea in the concluding qua- 
train is so well put as to have the air of originality. Indeed, I am 
not sure that the thought of the last two lines is not original ; — at 
all events it is exceedingly natural and impressive. I say " nat- 
ural" because, in any imagined ascent from the orb we inhabit, 
when heaven should " burst on the sight" — in other words, when 
the attraction of the planet should be superseded by that of anoth- 
er sphere, then instantly would the "dearth" have the appearance of 
"fleeting by." The versification, also, is much better here than 
is usual with the poetess. In general she is rough, through excess 
of harsh consonants. The whole poem is of higher merit than 
any which I can find with her name attached ; but there is little 
of the spirit of poesy in anything she writes. She evinces more 
feeling than ideality. 

Her first decided success was with her comedy, " Fashion," 
although much of this success itself is referable to the interest felt 
in her as a beautiful woman and an authoress. 

The play is not without merit. It may be commended espe- 
cially for its simplicity of plot. What the Spanish playwrights 
mean by dramas of intrigue, are the worst acting dramas in the 
world ; the intellect of an audience can never safely be fatigued by 
complexity. The necessity for verbose explanation, however, on 
the part of Trueman, at the close of the play, is in this regard a 
serious defect. A denouement should in all cases be taken up with 
action — with nothing else. Whatever cannot be explained by such 
action should be communicated at the opening of the story. 



ANNA CORA MOWATT. 



In the plot, however estimable for simplicity, there is of course 
not a particle of originality of invention. Had it, indeed, been 
designed as a burlesque upon the arrant conventionality of stage 
incidents in general, it might have been received as a palpable hit. 
There is not an event, a character, a jest, which is not a well-under- 
stood thing, a matter of course, a stage-property time out of mind. 
The general tone is adopted from " The School for Scandal," to 
which, indeed, the whole composition bears just such an affinity 
as the shell of a locust to the locust that tenants it — as the spec- 
trum of a Congreve rocket to the Congreve rocket itself. In the 
management of her imitation, nevertheless, Mrs. Mowatt has, I 
think, evinced a sense of theatrical effect or point which may lead 
her, at no very distant day, to compose an exceedingly taking, 
although it can never much aid her in composing a very merito- 
rious drama. "Fashion," in a word, owes what it had of success 
to its being the work of a lovely woman who had already excited 
interest, and to the very commonplaceness or spirit of convention- 
ality which rendered it readily comprehensible and appreciable by 
the public proper. It was much indebted, too, to the carpets, the 
ottomans, the chandeliers and the conservatories, which gained 
so decided a popularity for that despicable mass of inanity, the 
" London Assurance" of Bourcicault. 

Since " Fashion," Mrs. Mowatt has published one or two brief 
novels in pamphlet form, but they have no particular merit, al- 
though they afford glimpses (I cannot help thinking) of a genius 
as yet unrevealed, except in her capacity of actress. 

In this capacity, if she be but true to herself, she will assuredly 
win a very enviable distinction. She has done well, wonderfully 
well, both in tragedy and comedy ; but if she knew her own 
strength, she would confine herself nearly altogether to the de- 
picting (in letters not less than on the stage) the more gentle 
sentiments and the most profound passions. Her sympathy with 
the latter is evidently intense. In the utterance of the truly 
generous, of the really noble, of the unaffectedly passionate, we 
see her bosom heave, her cheek grow pale, her limbs tremble, her 
lip quiver, and nature's own tear rush impetuously to the eye. It 
is this freshness of the heart which will provide for her the 
greenest laurels. It is this enthusiasm, this well of deep feeling, 



/ 



ANNA CORA MOW ATT. 43 

which should be made to prove for her an inexhaustible source 
of fame. As an actress, it is to her a mine of wealth worth all 
the dawdling instruction in the world. Mrs. Mowatt, on her first 
appearance as Pauline, was quite as able to give lessons in stage 
routine to any actor or actress in America, as was any actor or 
actress to give lessons to her. Now, at least, she should throw 
all " support " to the winds, trust proudly to her own sense of 
art, her own rich and natural elocution, her beauty, which is un- 
usual, her grace, which is queenly, and be assured that these 
qualities, as she now possesses them, are all sufficient to render 
her a great actress, when considered simply as the means by which 
the end of natural acting is to be attained, as the mere instru- 
ments by which she may effectively and unimpededly lay bare to 
the audience the movements of her own passionate heart. 

Indeed, the great charm of her manner is its naturalness. She 
looks, speaks, and moves, with a well-controlled impulsiveness, as 
different as can be conceived from the customary rant and cant, 
the hack conventionality of the stage. Her voice is rich and vo- 
luminous, and although by no means powerful, is so well managed 
as to seem so. Her utterance is singularly distinct, its sole blem- 
ish being an occasional Anglicism of accent, adopted probably 
from her instructor, Mr. Crisp. Her reading could scarcely be 
improved. Her action is distinguished by an ease and self-pos- 
session which would do credit to a veteran. Her step is the per- 
fection of grace. Often have I watched her for hours with the 
closest scrutiny, yet never for an instant did I observe her in 
an attitude of the least awkwardness or even constraint, while 
many of her seemingly impulsive gestures spoke in loud terms of 
the woman of genius, of the poet imbued with the profoundest 
sentiment of the beautiful in motion. 

Her figure is slight, even fragile. Her face is a remarkably 
fine one, and of that precise character best adapted to the stage. 
The forehead is, perhaps, the least prepossessing feature, although 
it is by no means an unintellectual one. Hair light auburn, in 
rich profusion, and always arranged with exquisite taste. The 
eyes are gray, brilliant and expressive, without being full. The 
nose is well formed, with the Roman curve, and indicative of 
energy. This quality is also shown in the somewhat excessive 



44 GEORGE B. CHEEVER. 



prominence of the chin. The mouth is large, with brilliant an& 
even teeth and flexible lips, capable of the most instantaneous 
and effective variations of expression. A more radiantly beauti- 
ful smile it is quite impossible to conceive. 



GEORGE B. CHEEVER. 

The Reverend George B. Cheever created at one time some- 
thing of an excitement by the publication of a little brochure en- 
titled " Deacon Giles' Distillery." He is much better known, 
however, as the editor of " The Commonplace Book of American 
Poetry," a work which has at least the merit of not belying its 
title, and is exceedingly commonplace. I am ashamed to say 
that for several years this compilation afforded to Europeans the 
only material from which it was possible to form an estimate of 
the poetical ability of Americans. The selections appear to me 
exceedingly injudicious, and have all a marked leaning to the 
didactic. Dr. Cheever is not without a certain sort of negative 
ability as critic, but works of this character should be undertaken 
by poets or not at all. The verses which I have seen attributed 
to him are undeniably mediocres. 

His principal publications, in addition to those mentioned above, 
are "God's Hand in America," "Wanderings of a Pilgrim under 
the Shadow of Mont Blanc," " Wanderings of a Pilgrim under 
the Shadow of Jungfrau," and, lately, a "Defence of Capital 
Punishment." This " Defence " is at many points well reasoned, 
and as a clear resume of all that has been already said on its own 
side of the question, may be considered as commendable. It 
premises, however, (as well as those of all reasoners pro or con on 
this vexed topic,) are admitted only very partially by the world at 
large — a fact of which the author affects to be ignorant. Neither 
does he make the slightest attempt at bringing forward one novel 
argument. Any man of ordinary invention might have adduced 
and maintained a dozen. 

The two series of " Wanderings" are, perhaps, the best works 
of their writer. They are what is called "eloquent ;" a little too 
much in that way, perhaps, but nevertheless entertaining. 



CHARLES ANTHON. 45 



Dr. Cheever is rather small in stature, and his countenance is 
vivacious ; in other respects, there is nothing very observable 
about his personal appearance. He has been recently married. 



CHARLES ANTHON. 

Doctor Charles Anthon is the well-known Jay-Professor of 
the Greek and Latin languages in Columbia College, New York, 
and Rector of the Grammar School. If not absolutely the best, 
he is at least generally considered the best classicist in America. 
In England, and in Europe at large, his scholastic acquirements 
are more sincerely respected than those of any of our countrymen. 
His additions to Lempriere are there justly regarded as evincing 
a nice perception of method, and accurate as well as extensive 
erudition, but his " Classical Dictionary " has superseded the work 
of the Frenchman altogether. Most of Professor Anthon's pub- 
lications have been adopted as text-books at Oxford and Cam- 
bridge — an honor to be properly understood only by those ac- 
quainted with the many high requisites for attaining it. As a 
commentator (if not exactly as a critic) he may rank with any 
of his day, and has evinced powers very unusual in men who de- 
vote their lives to classical lore. His accuracy is very remarkable ; 
in this particular he is always to be relied upon. The trait mani- 
fests itself eves in his MS., which is a model of neatness and 
symmetry, exceeding in these respects anything of the kind with 
which I am acquainted. It is somewhat too neat, perhaps, and 
too regular, as well as diminutive, to be called beautiful ; it might 
be mistaken at any time, however, for very elaborate copperplate 
engraving. 

But his chirography, although fully in keeping, so far as preci- 
sion is concerned, with his mental character, is, in its entire free- 
dom from flourish or superfluity, as much out of keeping with his 
verbal style. In his notes to the Classics he is singularly Cicero- 
nian — if, indeed, not positively Johnsonese. 

An attempt was made not long ago to prepossess the public 
against his "Classical Dictionary," the most important of his 
works, by getting up a hue and cry of plagiarism — in the case of 



46 CHARLES ANTHON. 



all similar books the most preposterous accusation in the world, 
although, from its very preposterousness, one not easily rebutted. 
Obviously, the design in any such compilation is, in the first place, 
to make a useful school-book or book of reference, and the scholar 
who should be weak enough to neglect this indispensable point 
for the mere purpose of winning credit with a few bookish men 
for originality, would deserve to be dubbed, by the public at least, 
a dunce. There are very few points of classical scholarship which 
are not the common property of " the learned " throughout the 
world, and in composing any book of reference recourse is un- 
scrupulously and even necessarily had in all cases to similar books 
which have preceded. In availing themselves of these latter, 
however, it is the practise of quacks to paraphrase page after page, 
rearranging the order of paragraphs, making a slight alteration 
in point of fact here and there, but preserving the spirit of the 
whole, its information, erudition, etc., etc., while everything is so 
completely re-written as to leave no room for a direct charge of 
plagiarism ; and this is considered and lauded as originality. 
Now, he who, in availing himself of the labors of his predecessors 
(and it is clear that all scholars must avail themselves of such la- 
bors) — he who shall copy verbatim the passages to be desired, 
without attempt at palming off their spirit as original with him- 
self, is certainly no plagiarist, even if he fail to make direct ac- 
knowledgment of indebtedness — is unquestionably less of the 
plagiarist than the disingenuous and contemptible quack who 
wriggles himself, as above explained, into a reputation for origin- 
ality, a reputation quite out of place in a case of this kind — the 
public, of course, never caring a straw whether he be original or 
not. These attacks upon the New York professor are to be at- 
tributed to a clique of pedants in and about Boston, gentlemen 
envious of his success, and whose own compilations are noticeable 
only for the singular patience and ingenuity with which their 
dovetailing chicanery is concealed from the public eye. 

Doctor Anthon is, perhaps, forty-eight years of age; about 
five feet eight inches in height ; rather stout ; fair complexion ; 
hair light and inclined to curl ; forehead remarkably broad and 
high ; eye gray, clear and penetrating ; mouth well-formed, with 
excellent teeth — the lips having great flexibility, and consequent 



RALPH HOYT. 47 



power of expression ; the smile particularly pleasing. His ad- 
dress in general is bold, frank, cordial, full of bonhommie. His 
whole air is distingue in the best understanding of the term — 
that is to say, he would impress any one at first sight with the 
idea of his -being no ordinary man. He has qualities, indeed, 
which would have insured him eminent success in almost any 
pursuit ; and there are times in which his friends are half dis- 
posed to regret his exclusive devotion to classical literature. He 
was one of the originators of the late " New York Review," his 
associates in the conduct and proprietorship being Doctor F. L. 
Hawks and Professor R. C. Henry. By far the most valuable 
papers, however, were those of Doctor A. 



RALPH HOYT. 

The Reverend Ralph Hoyt is known chiefly — at least to the 
world of letters — by " The Chaunt of Life and other Poems, with 
Sketches and Essays." The publication of this work, however, was 
never completed, only a portion of the poems having appeared, 
and none of the essays or sketches. It is hoped that we shall yet 
have these latter. 

Of the poems issued, one, entitled " Old," had so many pecu- 
liar excellences that I copied the whole of it, although quite long, 
in " The Broadway Journal" It will remind every reader of Du- 
rand's fine picture, " An Old Man's Recollections," although be- 
tween poem and painting there is no more than a very admissi- 
ble similarity. 

I quote a stanza from " Old" (the opening one) by way of 
bringing the piece to the remembrance of any who may have 
forgotten it. 

By the wayside, on a mossy stone, 

Sat a hoary pilgrim sadly musing ; 
Oft I marked him sitting there alone, 

All the landscape like a page perusing; 
Poor unknown, 
By the way side on a mossy stone. 

The quaintness aimed at here is, so far as a single stanza is con- 
cerned, to be defended as a legitimate effect, conferring high plea- 



48 RALPH HOYT. 



sure on a numerous and cultivated class of minds. Mr. Hoyt, 
however, in his continuous and uniform repetition of the first line 
in the last of each stanza of twenty-five, has by much exceeded 
the proper limits of the quaint and impinged upon the ludicrous. 
The poem, nevertheless, abounds in lofty merit, and has, in espe- 
cial, some passages of rich imagination and exquisite pathos. For 
example — 

Seemed it pitiful he should sit there, 

No one sympathizing, no one heeding, 
None to love him for his thin gray hair. 

One sweet spirit broke the silent spell — 
Ah, to me her name was always Heaven ! 

She besought him all his grief to tell — 
(I was then thirteen and she eleven) 
Isabel ! 

One sweet spirit broke the silent spelL 

" Angel," said he, sadly, " I am old ; 

Earthly hope no longer hath a morrow : 
Why I sit here thou shalt soon be told" — 
(Then his eye betrayed a pearl of sorrow — 
Down it roiled — ) 
" Angel," said he, sadly, " / am old ! " 

It must be confessed that some portions of " Old" (which is 
by far the best of the collection) remind us forcibly of the " Old 
Man" of Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

" Proemus" is the concluding poem of the volume, and itself 
concludes with an exceedingly vigorous stanza, putting me not a 
little in mind of Campbell in his best days. 

" O'er all the silent sky 

A dark and scowling frown — 
But darker scowled each eye 
When all resolved to die — 

When {night of dread renown !) 
A thousand stars went down" 

Mr. Hoyt is about forty years of age, of the medium height, 
pale complexion, dark hair and eyes. His countenance expresses 
sensibility and benevolence. He converses slowly and with per- 
fect deliberation. He is married. 



GULIAN C. VEKPLANCK. 49 



GULIAN C. VERPLANCK. 

Mr. Verplanck has acquired reputation — at least his literary 
reputation — less from what he has done than from what he has 
given indication of ability to do. His best if not his principal 
works, have been addresses, orations and contributions to the re- 
. views. His scholarship is more than respectable, and his taste 
and acumen are not to be disputed. 

His legal acquirements, it is admitted, are very considerable. 
When in Congress he was noted as the most industrious man in 
that assembly, and acted as a walking register or volume of refer- 
ence, ever at the service of that class of legislators who are too 
lofty-minded to burden their memories with mere business par- 
ticulars or matters of fact. Of late years the energy of his cha- 
racter appears to have abated, and many of his friends go so far 
as to accuse him of indolence. - 

His family is quite influential — one of the few old Dutch ones 
retaining their social position. 

Mr. Verplanck is short in stature, not more than five feet five 
inches in height, and compactly or stoutly built. The head is 
square, massive, and covered with thick, bushy and grizzly hair ; 
the cheeks are ruddy ; lips red and full, indicating a relish for 
good cheer ; nose short and straight ; eyebrows much arched ; 
eyes dark blue, with what seems, to a casual glance, a sleepy ex- 
pression — but they gather light and fire as we examine them. 

He must be sixty, but a vigorous constitution gives promise of 
a ripe and healthful old age. He is active ; walks firmly, with a 
short, quick step. His manner is affable, or (more accurately) 
sociable. He converses well, although with no great fluency, 
and has his hobbies of talk ; is especially fond of old English litera- 
ture. Altogether, his person, intellect, tastes and general peculiar- 
ities, bear a very striking resemblance to those of the late Nicho- 
las Biddle. 

Vol. HI.— 3 



SO FREEMAN HUNT. 



FREEMAN HUNT. 

Mr. Hunt is the editor and proprietor of the well-known " Mer- 
chants' Magazine," one of the most useful of our monthly jour- 
nals, and decidedly the best " property" of any work of its class. 
In its establishment he evinced many remarkable traits of cha- 
racter. He was entirely without means, and even much in debt, 
and otherwise embarrassed, when by one of those intuitive per- 
ceptions which belong only to genius, but which are usually attri- 
buted to " good luck," the " happy" idea entered his head of get- 
ting up a magazine devoted to the interests of the influential class of 
merchants. The chief happiness of this idea, however, (which no 
doubt had been entertained and discarded by a hundred projectors 
before Mr. H.,) consisted in the method by which he proposed to 
carry it into operation. Neglecting the hackneyed modes of ad- 
vertising largely, circulating flashy prospectuses and sending out 
numerous " agents," who in general, merely serve the purpose of 
boring people into a very temporary support of the work in whose 
behalf they are employed, he took the whole matter resolutely 
into his own hands ; called personally, in the first place, upon his 
immediate mercantile friends ; explained to them, frankly and 
succinctly, his object ; put the value and necessity of the contem- 
plated publication in the best light — as he well knew how to do 
— and in this manner obtained to head his subscription list a good 
many of the most eminent business men in New York. Armed 
with their names and with recommendatory letters from many 
of them, he now pushed on to the other chief cities of the Union, 
and thus, in less time than is taken by ordinary men to make a 
preparatory flourish of trumpets, succeeded in building up for him- 
self a permanent fortune and for the public a journal of immense 
interest and value. In the whole proceeding he evinced a tact, 
a knowledge of mankind and a self-dependence which are the sta- 
ple of even greater achivements than the establishment of a five 
dollar magazine. In the subsequent conduct of the work he 
gave evidence of equal ability. Having without aid put the ma- 
gazine upon a satisfactory footing as regards its circulation, he 



FREEMAN HUNT. 51 



also without aid undertook its editorial and business conduct — 
from the first germ of the conception to the present moment 
having kept the whole undertaking within his own hands. His 
subscribers and regular contributors are now among the most in- 
telligent and influential in America ; the journal is regarded as 
absolute authority in mercantile matters, circulates extensively not 
only in this country but in Europe, and even in regions more re- 
mote, affording its worthy and enterprising projector a large in- 
come, which no one knows better than himself how to put to 
good use. 

The strong points, the marked peculiarities of Mr. Hunt could 
not have failed in arresting the attention of all observers of cha- 
racter ; and Mr Willis in especial has made him the subject of 
repeated comment. I copy what follows from the " New York 
Mirror :" 

Hunt has been glorified in the " Hong-Kong Gazette," is regularly compli- 
mented by the English mercantile authorities, has every bank in the world 
for an eager subscriber, every consul, every ship-owner and navigator; is 
filed away as authority in every library, and thought of in half the countries 
of the world as early as No. 3 in their enumeration of distinguished Ameri- 
cans, yet who seeks to do him honor in the city he does honor to ? The 
" Merchants' Magazine," though a prodigy of perseverance and industry, is 
not an accidental development of Hunt's energies. He has always been 
singularly sagacious and original in devising new works and good ones. He 
was the founder of the first ' Ladies' Magazine,'* of the first children's pe- 
riodical ; he started the ' American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining 
Knowledge,' compiled the best known collection of American anecdotes and 
is an indefatigable writer — the author, among other things of " Letters About 
the Hudson." 

Hunt was a playfellow of ours in round-jacket days, and we have always 
looked at him with a reminiscent interest. His luminous, eager eyes, as he 
goes along the street, keenly bent on his errand, would impress any observer 
with an idea of his genius and determination, and we think it quite time his 
earnest head was in the engraver's hand and his daily passing by a mark for 
the digito monstrari. Few more worthy or more valuable citizens are 
among us. 

Much of Mr. Hunt's character is included in what I have al- 
ready said and quoted. He is " earnest," " eager," combining in 
a very singular manner general coolness and occasional excitability. 
He is a true friend, and the enemy of no man. His heart is full 
of the warmest sympathies and charities. No one in New York 
is more universally popular. 

* At this point Mr. Willis is, perhaps, in error. 



52 PIERO MARONCELLI. 



He is about five feet eight inches in height, well proportioned ; 
complexion dark-florid ; forehead capacious ; chin massive and 
projecting, indicative (according to Lavater and general expe- 
rience) of that energy which is, in fact, the chief point of his cha" 
racter ; hair light brown, very fine, of a weblike texture, worn 
long and floating about the face ; eyes of wonderful brilliancy and 
intensity of expression ; the whole countenance beaming with 
sensibility and intelligence. He is married, and about thirty- 
eight years of age. 



PIERO MARONCELLI. 

During his twelve years' imprisonment, Maroncelli composed a 
number of poetical works, some of which were committed to pa- 
per, others lost for the want of it. In this country he has pub- 
lished a volume entitled "Additions to the Memoirs of Silvio 
Pellico," containing numerous anecdotes of the captivity not re- 
corded in Pellico's work, and an " Essay on the Classic and Ro- 
mantic Schools," the author proposing to divide them anew and 
designate them by novel distinctions. There is at least some 
scholarship and some originality in this essay. It is also brief. 
Maroncelli regards it as the best of his compositions. It is strongly 
tinctured with transcendentalism. The volume contains, likewise, 
some poems, of which the " Psalm of Life," and the " Psalm of 
the Dawn" have never been translated into English. " Winds of 
the Wakened Spring," one of the pieces included, has been hap- 
pily rendered by Mr. Halleck, and is the most favorable specimen 
that could have been selected. These " Additions" accompanied 
a Boston version of " My Prisons, by Silvio Pellico." 

Maroncelli is now about fifty years old, and bears on his person 
the marks of long suffering ; he has lost a leg ; his hair and 
beard became gray many years ago ; just now he is suffering 
from severe illness, and from this it can scarcely be expected that 
he will recover. 

In figure he is short and slight. His forehead is rather low, 
but broad. His eyes are light blue and weak. The nose and 
mouth are large. His features in general have all the Italian mo- 



LAUGHTON OSBORK 63 



bility ; their expression is animated and full of intelligence. He 
speaks hurriedly and gesticulates to excess. He is irritable, frank, 
generous, chivalrous, warmly attached to his friends, and expect- 
ing from them equal devotion. His love of country is unbounded, 
and he is quite enthusiastic in his endeavors to circulate in Ame- 
rica the literature of Italy. 



LAUGHTON OSBORN. 

Personally, Mr. Osborn is little known as an author, either to 
the public or in literary society, but he has made a great many 
" sensations " anonymously, or with a mon de plume. I am not 
sure that he has published anything with his own name. 

One of his earliest works — if not his earliest — was " The Ad- 
ventures of Jeremy Levis, by Himself," in one volume, a kind of 
medley of fact, fiction, satire, criticism, and novel philosophy. It 
is a dashing, reckless brochure, brimful of talent and audacity. 
Of course it was covertly admired by the few, and loudly con- 
demned by all of the many who can fairly be said to have seen it 
at all. It had no great circulation. There was something wrong, 
I fancy, in the mode of its issue. 

"Jeremy Levis" was followed by "The Dream of Alla-Ad- 
Deen, from the romance of ' Anastasia,' by Charles Erskine White, 
D.D." This is a thin pamphlet of thirty-two pages, each page 
containing about a hundred and forty words. AllaAd-Deen is 
the son of Aladdin, of " wonderful lamp " memory, and the story 
is in the " Vision of Mirza," or " Rasselas " way. The design is 
to reconcile us to death and evil, on the somewhat uphilosophical 
ground that comparatively we are of little importance in the scale 
of creation. The author himself supposes this scale to be infinite, 
and thus his argument proves too much ; for if evil should be 
regarded by man as of no consequence because, " comparatively," 
he is of none, it must be regarded as of no consequence by the 
angels for a similar reason — and so on in a never-ending ascent. 
In other words, the only thing proved is the rather bull-ish pro- 
position that evil is no evil at all. I do not find that the " Dream " 



54 LAUGHTON OSBORK 



elicited any attention. It would have been more appropriately 
published in one of our magazines. 

Next in order came, I believe, "The Confessions of a Poet, by 
Himself." This was in two volumes, of the ordinary novel form, 
but printed very openly. It made much noise in the literary world, 
and no little curiosity was excited in regard to its author, who 
was generally supposed to be John Neal. There were some 
grounds for this supposition, the tone and matter of the narrative 
bearing much resemblance to those of "Errata" and "Seventy- 
Six," especially in the points of boldness and vigor. The " Con- 
fessions," however, far surpassed any production of Mr. Neal's in 
a certain air of cultivation (if not exactly of scholarship) which 
pervaded it, as well as in the management of its construction — a 
particular in which the author of "The Battle of Niagara" in- 
variably fails ; there is no precision, no finish, about anything he 
does — always an excessive force but little of refined art. Mr. N. 
seems to be deficient in a sense of completeness. He begins well, 
vigorously, startlingly, and proceeds by fits, quite at random, now 
prosing, now exciting vivid interest, but his conclusions are sure 
to be hurried and indistinct, so that the reader perceives a failing 
off, and closes the book with dissatisfaction. He has done no- 
thing which, as a whole, is even respectable, and " The Confes- 
sions" are quite remarkable for their artistic unity and perfection. 
But in higher regards they are to be commended. I do not think, 
indeed, that a better book of its kind has been written in America. 
To be sure, it is not precisely the work to place in the hands of a 
lady, but its scenes of passion are intensely wrought, its incidents 
are striking and original, its sentiments audacious and suggestive 
at least, if not at all times tenable. In a word, it is that rare 
thing, a fiction of power without rudeness. Its spirit, in general, 
resembles that of "Miserrimus" and "Martin Faber." 

Partly on account of what most persons would term their li- 
centiousness, partly, also, on account of the prevalent idea that 
Mr. Neal (who was never very popular with the press) had written 
them, "The Confessions," by the newspapers, were most unscru- 
pulously misrepresented and abused. The " Commercial Adver- 
tiser" of New York was, it appears, foremost in condemnation, 
and Mr. Osborn thought proper to avenge his wrongs by the pub- 



LAUGHTON OSBORN. 55 

lication of a bulky satirical poem, levelled at the critics in general, 
but more especially at Colonel Stone, the editor of the " Com- 
mercial." This satire (which was published in exquisite style as 
regards print and paper,) was entitled " The Vision of Rubeta." 
Owing to the high price necessarily set upon the book, no great 
many copies were sold, but the few that got into circulation made 
quite a hubbub, and with reason, for the satire was not only bitter 
but personal in the last degree. It was, moreover, very censur- 
ably indecent — filthy is, perhaps, the more appropriate word. 
The press, without exception, or nearly so, condemned it in loud 
terms, without taking the trouble to investigate its pretensions as 
a literary work. But as "The Confessions of a Poet" was one 
of the best novels of its kind ever written in this country, so "The 
Vision of Rubeta" was decidedly the best satire. For its vul- 
garity and gross personality there is no defence, but its mordacity 
cannot be gainsaid. In calling it, however, the best American 
satire, I do not intend any excessive commendation — for it is, in 
fact, the only satire composed by an American. Trumbull's clumsy 
work is nothing at all, and then we have Halleck's " Croakers," 
which is very feeble — but what is there besides ? " The Vision" 
is our best satire, and still a sadly deficient one. It was bold 
enough and bitter enough, and well constructed and decently 
versified, but it failed in sarcasm because its malignity was per- 
mitted to render itself evident. The author is never very severe 
because he is never sufficiently cool. . We laugh not so much at 
the objects of his satire as we do at himself for getting into so 
great a passion. But, perhaps, under no circumstances is wit the 
forte of Mr. Osborn. He has few equals at downright invective. 
The "Vision" was succeeded by "Arthur Carryl and other 
Poems," including an additional canto of the satire, and several 
happy although not in all cases accurate or comprehensive imita- 
tions in English of the Greek and Roman metres. "Arthur 
Carryl" is a fragment, in the manner of " Don Juan." I do not 
think it especially meritorious. It has, however, a truth-telling 
and discriminative preface, and its notes are well worthy perusal. 
Some opinions embraced in these latter on the topic of versifica- 
tion I have examined in one of the series of articles called " Mar- 
ginalia." 



56 FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. 

I am not aware that since " Arthur Carryl " Mr. Osborn has 
written anything more than a " Treatise on Oil Painting," issued 
not long ago by Messrs. Wiley and Putnam. This work is highly 
spoken of by those well qualified to judge, but is, I believe, prin- 
cipally a compilation or compendium. 

In personal character, Mr. 0. is one of the most remarkable 
men I ever yet had the pleasure of meeting. He is undoubtedly one 
of " Nature's own noblemen," full of generosity, courage, honor 
— chivalrous in every respect, but, unhappily, carrying his ideas 
of chivalry, or rather of independence, to the point of Quixotism, 
if not of absolute insanity. He has no doubt been misappre- 
hended, and therefore wronged by the world ; but he should not 
fail to remember that the source of the wrong lay in his own 
idiosyncrasy — one altogether unintelligible and unappreciable by 
the mass of mankind. 

He is a member of one of the oldest and most influential, for- 
merly one of the wealthiest families in New York. His acquire- 
ments and accomplishments are many and unusual. As poet, 
painter, and musician, he has succeeded nearly equally well, and 
absolutely succeeded as each. His scholarship is extensive. In 
the French and Italian languages, he is quits at home, and in every- 
thing he is thorough and accurate. His critical abilities are to be 
highly respected, although he is apt to swear somewhat too round- 
ly by Johnson and Pope. Imagination is not Mr. Osborn's forte. 

He is about thirty-two or three — certainly not more than thirty- 
five years of age. In person he is well made, probably five feet 
ten or eleven, muscular and active. Hair, eyes, and complexion, 
rather light ; fine teeth ; the whole expression of the countenance 
manly, frank, and prepossessing in the highest degree. 



FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. 

The name of Halleck is at least as well established in the 
poetical world as that of any American. Our principal poets are, 
perhaps, most frequently named in this order — Bryant, Halleck, 
Dana, Sprague, Longfellow, Willis, and so on — Halleck coming 



FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. 57 

second in the series, but holding, in fact, a rank in the public 
opinion quite equal to that of Bryant. The accuracy of the ar- 
rangement as above made may, indeed, be questioned. For my 
own part, I should have it thus — Longfellow, Bryant, Halleck, 
"Willis, Sprague, Dana ; and, estimating rather the poetic capacity 
than the poems actually accomplished, there are three or four 
comparatively unknown writers whom I would place in the series 
between Bryant and Halleck, while there are about a dozen whom 
I should assign a position between Willis and Sprague. Two 
dozen at least might find room between Sprague and Dana — this 
latter, I fear, owing a very large portion of his reputation to his 
quondam editorial connexion with " The North American Re- 
view." One or two poets, now in my mind's eye, I should have 
no hesitation in posting above even Mr. Longfellow — still not in- 
tending this as very extravagant praise. 

It is noticeable, however, that, in the arrangement which I at- 
tribute to the popular understanding, the order observed is nearly, 
if not exactly, that of the ages — the poetic ages — of the individ- 
ual poets. Those rank first who were first known. The priority 
has established the strength of impression. Nor is this result to 
be accounted for by mere reference to the old saw — that first im- 
pressions are the strongest. Gratitude, surprise, and a species of 
hyper patriotic triumph have been blended, and finally confounded 
with admiration or appreciation in regard to the pioneers of 
American literature, among whom there is not one whose produc- 
tions have not been grossly overrated by his countrymen. Hith- 
erto we have been in no mood to view with calmness and discuss 
with discrimination the real claims of the few who were first in 
convincing the mother country that her sons were not all brain- 
less, as at one period she half affected and wholly wished to be- 
lieve. Is there any one so blind as not to see that Mr. Cooper, 
for example, owes much, and Mr. Paulding nearly all, of his rep- 
utation as a novelist to his early occupation of the field ? Is there 
any one so dull as not to know that fictions which neither of these 
gentlemen could have written are written daily by native authors, 
without attracting much more of commendation than can be in- 
cluded in a newspaper paragraph ? And, again, is there any one 
so prejudiced as not to acknowledge that all this happens because 

3* 



58 F1TZ-GREENE HALLECK. 

there is no longer either reason or wit in the query, " Who reads 
an American book ?" 

I mean to say, of course, that Mr. Halleck, in the apparent 
public estimate, maintains a somewhat better position than that 
to which, on absolute grounds, he is entitled. There is some- 
thing, too, in the bonhommie of certain of his compositions — 
something altogether distinct from poetic merit — which has aided 
to establish him ; and much, also, must be admitted on the score 
of his personal popularity, which is deservedly great. With all 
these allowances, however, there will still be found a large amount 
of poetical fame to which he is fairly entitled. 

He has written very little, although he began at an early age — 
when quite a boy, indeed. His "juvenile" works, however, have 
been kept very judiciously from the public eye. Attention was 
first called to him by his satires, signed " Croaker " and " Croaker 
& Co.," published in "The New York Evening Post," in 1819. 
Of these the pieces with the signature " Croaker <fc Co. v were the 
joint work of Halleck and his friend Drake. The political and 
personal features of these jeux d'esprit gave them a consequence 
and a notoriety to which they are entitled on no other account. 
They are not without a species of drollery, but are loosely and no 
doubt carelessly written. 

Neither was "Fanny," which closely followed the "Croakers," 
constructed with any great deliberation. " It was printed," say 
the ordinary memoirs, " within three weeks from its commence- 
ment ;" but the truth is, that a couple of days would have been 
an ample allowance of time for any such composition. If we ex- 
cept a certain gentlemanly ease and insouciance, with some fancy 
of illustration, there is really very little about this poem to be 
admired. There has been no positive avowal of its authorship, 
although there can be no doubt of its having been written by 
Halleck. He, I presume, does not esteem it very highly. It is 
a mere extravaganza, in close imitation of " Don Juan " — a vehi- 
cle for squibs at cotemporary persons and things. 

Our poet, indeed, seems to have been much impressed by " Don 
Juan," and attempts to engraft its farcicalities even upon the grace 
and delicacy of " Alnwick Castle ." as, for example, in — 



FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. 59 

Men in the coal and cattle line, 

From Teviot's bard and hero land, 

From royal Berwick's beach of sand, 

From Wooler, Morpeth, Hexham, and 
Newcastle upon Tyne. 

These things may lay claim to oddity, but no more. They are 
totally out of keeping with the tone of the sweet poem into which 
they are thus clumsily introduced, and serve no other purpose 
than to deprive it of all unity of effect. If a poet must be far- 
cical, let him be just that ; he can be nothing better at the same 
moment. To be drolly sentimental, or even sentimentally droll, 
is intolerable to men and gods and columns. 

" Alnwick Castle " is distinguished, in general, by that air of 
quiet grace, both in thought and expression, which is the prevail- 
ing feature of the muse of Halleck. Its second stanza is a good 
specimen of this manner. The commencement of the fourth be- 
longs to a very high order of poetry. 

Wild roses by the Abbey towers 

Are gay in their young bud and bloom — 

They were born of a race of funeral flowers 

That garlanded, in long-gone hours, 
A Templar's knightly tomb. 

This is gloriously imaginative, and the effect is singularly in- 
creased by the sudden transition from iambuses to anapaests. The 
passage is, I think, the noblest to be found in Halleck, and I would 
be at a loss to discover its parallel in all American poetry. 

" Marco Bozzaris " has much lyrical, without any great amount 
of ideal beauty. Force is its prevailing feature — force resulting 
rather from well-ordered metre, vigorous rhythm, and a judicious 
disposal of the circumstances of the poem, than from any of the 
truer lyric material. I should do my conscience great wrong were 
I to speak of " Marco Bozzaris " as it is the fashion to speak of 
it, at least in print. Even as a lyric or ode it is surpassed by 
many American and a multitude of foreign compositions of a 
similar character. 

" Burns " has numerous passages exemplifying its author's fe- 
licity of expression ; as, for instance — 

Such graves as his are pilgrim shrines — 
Shrines to no code or creed confined — 

The Delphian vales, the Palestine*, 
The Meccas of the mind. 



60 FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. 

And, again — 

There have been loftier themes than his, 

And longer scrolls and louder lyres, 
And lays lit up with Poesy's 

Purer and holier fires. 

But to the sentiment involved in this last quatrain I feel disposed 
to yield an assent more thorough than might be expected. Burns, 
indeed, was the puppet of circumstance. As a poet, no person 
on the face of the earth has been more extravagantly, more ab- 
surdly overrated. 

" The Poet's Daughter " is one of the most characteristic works 
of Halleck, abounding in his most distinctive traits, grace, expres- 
sion, repose, insouciance. The vulgarity of 

I'm busy in the cotton trade 
And sugar line, 

has, I rejoice to see, been omitted in the late editions. The 
eleventh stanza is certainly not English as it stands, and, besides, 
is quite unintelligible. What is the meaning of this — 

But her who asks, though first among 
The good, the beautiful, the young, 
The birthright of a spell more strong 
Than these have brought her. 

The " Lines on the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake " is, as a 
whole, one of the best poems of its author. Its simplicity and 
delicacy of sentiment will recommend it to all readers. It is, 
however, carelessly written, and the first quatrain, 

Green be the turf above thee, 

Friend of my better days — 
None knew thee but to love thee, 

Nor named thee but to praise. 

although beautiful, bears too close a resemblance to the still more 
beautiful lines of Wordsworth — 

She dwelt among the untrodden ways 

Beside the springs of Dove, 
A. maid whom there were none to praise, 

And very few to love. 

In versification Mr. Halleck is much as usual, although in this 
regard Mr. Bryant has paid him numerous compliments. " Marco 
Bozzaris " has certainly some vigor of rhythm, but its author, in 
short, writes carelessly, loosely, and, as a matter of course, seldom 
effectively, so far as the outworks of literature are concerned. 



FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. 61 

Of late clays he has nearly given up the muses, and we recog- 
nise his existence as a poet chiefly by occasional translations from 
the Spanish or German. 

Personally, he is a man to be admired, respected, but more es- 
pecially beloved. His address has all the captivating bonhommie 
which is the leading feature of his poetry, and, indeed, of his 
whole moral nature. With his friends he is all ardor, enthusi- 
asm and cordiality, but to the world at large he is reserved, shun- 
ning society, into which he is seduced only with difficulty, and 
upon rare occasions. The love of solitude seems to have become 
with him a passion. 

He is a good modern linguist, and an excellent belles lettres 
scholar ; in general, has read a great deal, although very discur- 
sively. He is what the world calls ultra in most of his opinions, 
more particularly about literature and politics, and is fond of 
broaching and supporting paradoxes. He converses fluently, 
with animation and zeal ; is choice and accurate in his language, 
exceedingly quick at repartee, and apt at anecdote. His manners 
are courteous, with dignity and a little tincture of Gallicism. His 
age is about fifty. In height he is probably five feet seven. He 
has been stout, but may now be called well-proportioned. Hi 
forehead is a noble one, broad, massive and intellectual, a litt**, 
bald about the temples ; eyes dark and brilliant, but not large ; 
nose Grecian ; chin prominent ; mouth finely chiselled and full of 
expression, although the lips are thin ; — his smile is peculiarly 
sweet. 

In "Graham's Magazine" for September, 1843, there appeared 
an engraving of Mr. Halleck from a painting by Inman. The 
likeness conveys a good general idea of the man, but is far too 
stout and youthful-looking for his appearance at present. 

His usual pursuits have been commercial, but he is now the 
principal superintendent of the business of Mr. John Jacob Astor. 
He is unmarried. 



62 ANN S. STEPHENS. 



ANN S. STEPHENS. 

Mrs. Stephens has made no collection of her works, but has 
written much for the magazines, and well. Her compositions 
have been brief tales with occasional poems. She made her first 
" sensation" in obtaining a premium of four hundred dollars, offer- 
ed for " the best prose story" by some one of our journals, her 
"Mary Derwent" proving the successful article. The amount 
of the prize, however — a much larger one than it has been the 
custom to offer — had more to do with the eclat of the success 
than had the positive merit of the tale, although this is very con- 
siderable. She has subsequently written several better things — 
"Malina Gray," for example, "Alice Copley," and "The Two 
Dukes." These are on serious subjects. In comic ones she has 
comparatively failed. She is fond of the bold, striking, trenchant 
— in a word, of the melo-dramatic ; has a quick appreciation of 
the picturesque, and is not unskilful in delineations of character. 
She seizes adroitly on salient incidents and presents them with 
vividness to the eye, but in their combinations or adaptations she 
is by no means so thoroughly at home — that is to say, her plots 
are not so good as are their individual items. Her style is what 
the critics usually term " powerful," but lacks real power through 
its verboseness and floridity. It is, in fact, generally turgid — 
even bombastic — involved, needlessly parenthetical, and super- 
abundant in epithets, although these latter are frequently well 
chosen. Her sentences are, also, for the most part too long ; we 
forget their commencements ere we get at their terminations. 
Her faults, nevertheless, both in matter and manner, belong to 
the effervescence of high talent, if not exactly of genius. 

Of Mrs. Stephens' poetry I have seen so very little that I feel 
myself scarcely in condition to speak of it. 

She began her literary life, I believe, by editing " The Portland 
Magazine," and has since been announced as editress of " The 
Ladies' Companion," a monthly journal published some years ago 
in New York, and also, at a later period, of " Graham's Maga- 
zine," and subsequently, again, of " Peterson's National Maga- 



EVERT A. DUYCKINCK. 68 

zine." These announcements were announcements and no more ; 
the lady had nothing to do with the editorial control of either of 
the three last-named works. 

The portrait of Mrs. Stephens which appeared in " Graham's 
Magazine" for November, 1844, cannot fairly be considered a 
likeness at all. She is tall and slightly inclined to embonpoint — 
an English figure. Her forehead is somewhat low, but broad ; 
the features generally massive, but full of life and intellectuality. 
The eyes are blue and brilliant ; the hair blonde and very luxu- 
riant. 



EVERT A. DUYCKINCK. 

Mr. Duyckinck is one of the most influential of the New York 
litterateurs, and has done a great deal for the interests of Ameri- 
can letters. Not the least important service rendered by him was 
the projection and editorship of Wiley and Putnam's " Library of 
Choice Reading," a series which brought to public notice many 
valuable foreign works which had been suffering under neglect in 
this country, and at the same time afforded unwonted encourage- 
ment to native authors by publishing their books, in good style 
and in good company, without trouble or risk to the authors them- 
selves, and in the very teeth of the disadvantages arising from the 
want of an international copyright law. At one period it seemed 
that this happy scheme was to be overwhelmed by the competi- 
tion of rival publishers — taken, in fact, quite out of the hands of 
those who, by " right of discovery," were entitled at least to its 
first fruits. A great variety of " Libraries," in imitation, were set 
on foot, but whatever may have been the temporary success of 
any of these latter, the original one had already too well estab- 
lished itself in the public favor to be overthrown, and thus has not 
been prevented from proving of great benefit to our literature at 
large. 

Mr. Duyckinck has slyly acquired much fame and numerous 
admirers under the nom deplume of " Felix Merry." The various 
essays thus signed have attracted attention everywhere from the 
judicious. The style is remarkable for its very unusual blending 



64 EVERT A. DUYCKINCK. 

of purity and ease with a seemingly inconsistent originality, force 
and independence. 

" Felix Merry," in connexion with Mr. Cornelius Matthews, was 
one of the editors and originators of " Arcturus," decidedly the 
very best magazine in many respects ever published in the United 
States. A large number of its most interesting papers were the 
work of Mr. D. The magazine was, upon the whole, a little too 
good to enjoy extensive popularity — although I am here using an 
equivocal phrase, for a better journal might have been far more 
acceptable to the public. I must be understood, then, as employ- 
ing the epithet " good" in the sense of the literary quietists. The 
general taste of " Arcturus" was, I think, excessively tasteful ; but 
this character applies rather more to its external or mechanical 
appearance than to its essential qualities. Unhappily, magazines 
and other similar publications, are, in the beginning, judged chief- 
ly by externals. People saw " Arcturus" looking very much like 
other works which had failed through notorious dullness, although 
admitted as arbitri elegantiarum in all points of what is termed 
taste or decorum ; and they, the people, had no patience to ex- 
amine any farther. Caesar's wife was required not only to be vir- 
tuous but to seem so, and in letters it is demanded not only that 
we be not stupid, but that we do not array ourselves in the habili- 
ments of stupidity. 

It cannot be said of " Arcturus" exactly that it wanted force. It 
was deficient in power of impression, and this deficiency is to be 
attributed mainly to the exceeding brevity of its articles — a bre- 
vity that degenerated into mere paragraphism, precluding disser- 
tation or argument, and thus all permanent effect. The maga- 
zine, in fact, had some of the worst or most inconvenient features 
without any of the compensating advantages of a weekly literary 
newspaper. The mannerism to which I refer seemed to have its 
source in undue admiration and consequent imitation of " The 
Spectator." 

In addition to his more obvious literary engagements, Mr. 
Duyckinck writes a great deal, editorially and otherwise, for " The 
Democratic Review," " The Morning News," and other periodicals. 

In character he is remarkable, distinguished for the bonhommie 
of his manner, his simplicity and single-mindedness, his active 



i 



MARY GOVE. 65 



beneficence, his hatred of wrong done even to any enemy, and 
especially for an almost Quixotic fidelity to his friends. He seems 
in perpetual good humor with all things, and I have no doubt 
that in his secret heart he is an optimist. 

In person he is equally simple as in character — the one is a 
pendent of the other. He is about five feet eight inches high, 
somewhat slender. The forehead, phrenologically, is a good one ; 
eyes and hair light ; the whole expression of the face that of sere- 
nity and benevolence, contributing to give an idea of youthfulness. 
He is probably thirty, but does not seem to be twenty-five. His 
dress, also, is in full keeping with his character, scrupulously neat 
but plain, and conveying an instantaneous conviction of the gen- 
tleman. He is a descendant of one of the oldest and best Dutch 
families in the state. Married. 



MARY GOYE. 

Mrs. Mart Gove, under the pseudonym of "Mary Orme," 
has written many excellent papers for the magazines. Her sub- 
jects are usually tinctured with the mysticism of the transcenden- 
talists, but are truly imaginative. Her style is quite remarkable 
for its luminousness and precision — two qualities very rare with 
her sex. An article entitled " The Gift of Prophecy," published 
originally in " The Broadway Journal," is a fine specimen of her 
manner. 

Mrs. Gove, however, has acquired less notoriety by her literary 
compositions than by her lectures on physiology to classes of 
females. These lectures are said to have been instructive and use- 
ful ; they certainly elicited much attention. Mrs. G. has also 
given public discourses on Mesmerism, I believe, and other similar 
themes — matters which put to the severest test the credulity, or, 
more properly, the faith of mankind. She is, I think, a Mesmerist, 
a Swedenborgian, a phrenologist, a homoeopathist, and a disciple 
of Priessnitz — what more I am not prepared to say. 

She is rather below the medium height, somewhat thin, with 
dark hair and keen, intelligent black eyes. She converses well and 
with enthusiasm. In many respects a very interesting woman. 



JAMES ALDRIOH. 



JAMES ALDRICH. 

Mr. Aldrich has written much for the magazines, &c., and at 
one time assisted Mr. Park Benjamin in the conduct of " The 
New World." He also originated, I believe, and edited a not 
very long-lived or successful weekly paper, called " The Literary 
Gazette,'' an imitation in its external appearance of the London 
journal of the same name. I am not aware that he has made any 
collection of his writings. His poems abound in the true poetic 
spirit, but they are frequently chargeable with plagiarism, or 
something much like it. True, I have seen but three of Mr. 
Aldrich's compositions in verse — the three (or perhaps there are 
four of them,) included by Doctor Griswold in his " Poets and 
Poetry of America." Of these three, (or four,) however, there are 
two which I cannot help regarding as palpable plagiarisms. Of 
one of them, in especial, " A Death-Bed," it is impossible to say 
a plausible word in defence. Both in matter and manner it is 
nearly identical with a little piece entitled " The Death-Bed," by 
Thomas Hood. 

The charge of plagiarism, nevertheless, is a purely literary one ; 
and a plagiarism even distinctly proved by no means necessarily 
involves any moral delinquency. This proposition applies very 
especially to what appear to be poetical thefts. The poetic senti- 
ment presupposes a keen appreciation of the beautiful with a long- 
ing for its assimilation into the poetic identity. What the poet 
intensely admires becomes, thus, in very fact, although only par- 
tially, a portion of his own soul. Within this soul it has a 
secondary origination ; and the poet, thus possessed by another's 
thought, cannot be said to take of it possession. But in either 
view he thoroughly feels it as his own ; and the tendency to this 
feeling is counteracted only by the sensible presence of the true, 
palpable origin of the thought in the volume whence he has de- 
rived it — an origin which, in the long lapse of years, it is impossi- 
ble not to forget, should the thought itself, as it often is, be for- 
gotten. But the frailest association will regenerate it : it springs 
up with all the vigor of a new birth ; its absolute originality is 



JAMES ALDRICH. 6T 



not with the poet a matter even of suspicion ; and when he has 
written it and printed it, and on its account is charged with pla- 
giarism, there will be no one more entirely astounded than him- 
self. Now, from what I have said, it appears that the liability to 
accidents of this character is in the direct ratio of the poetic sen- 
timent, of the susceptibility to the poetic impression ; and, in fact, 
all literary history demonstrates that, for the most frequent and 
palpable plagiarisms we must search the works of the most emi- 
nent poets. 

Since penning the above I have found five quatrains by Mr. 
Aldrich, with the heading " Molly Gray." These verses are in 
the fullest exemplification of what I have just said of their au- 
thor, evincing at once, in the most remarkable manner, both his 
merit as an imaginative poet and his unconquerable proneness to 
imitation. I quote the two concluding quatrains. 

Pretty, fairy Molly Gray ! 

What may thy fit emblems be ? 
Stream or star or bird or flower — 

They are all too poor for thee. 

No type to match thy beauty 

My wandering fancy brings — 
Not fairer than its chrysalis 

Ihy soul with its golden wings ! 

Here the " Pretty, fairy Molly Gray !" will put every reader in 
mind of Tennyson's "Airy, fairy Lillian !" by which Mr. Alclrich's 
whole poem has been clearly suggested ; but the thought in the 
finale is, as far as I know anything about it, original, and is not 
more happy than happily expressed. 

Mr. Aldrich is about thirty-six years of age. In regard to his 
person there is nothing to be especially noted. 



68 HENRY CARY. 



HENRY CARY. 

Doctor Griswold introduces Mr. Cary to the appendix of 
" The Poet and Poetry," as Mr. Henry Carey, and gives him credit 
for an Anacreontic song of much merit entitled, or commencing, 
"Old Wine to Drink." This was not written by Mr. C. He has com- 
posed little verse, if any, but, under the nom de plume of " John 
Waters," has acquired some note by a series of prose essays in 
" The New York American," and " The Knickerbocker." These es- 
says have merit, unquestionably, but some person, in an article fur- 
nished " The Broadway Journal," before my assumption of its edi- 
torship, has gone to the extreme of toadyism in their praise. This 
critic (possibly Mr. Briggs) thinks that John Waters " is in some 
sort a Sam Rogers" — " resembles Lamb in fastidiousness of taste" 
— " has a finer artistic taste than the author of the ' Sketch Book' " 
— that his " sentences are the most perfect in the language — too 
perfect to be peculiar" — that " it would be a vain task to hunt 
through them all for a superfluous conjunction," and that " we need 
them (the works of John Waters !) as models of style in these days 
of rhodomontades and Macaulayisms /" 

The truth seems to be that Mr. Cary is a vivacious, fanciful, en- 
tertaining essayist — a fifth or sixth rate one — with a style that, as 
times go — in view of such stylists as Mr. Briggs, for example — 
may be termed respectable, and no more. What the critic of the 
B. J. wishes us to understand by a style that is " too perfect," 
" the most perfect," etc., it is scarcely worth while to inquire, since 
it is generally supposed that " perfect" admits of no degrees of 
comparison ; but if Mr. Briggs (or whoever it is) finds it " a vain 
task to hunt" through all Mr. John Waters' works " for a super- 
fluous conjunction," there are few schoolboys who would not prove 
more successful hunters than Mr. Briggs. 

" It was well filled," says the essayist, on the very page con- 
taining these encomiums, " and yet the number of performers," 
etc. " We paid our visit to the incomparable ruins of the castle, 
and then proceeded to retrace our steps, and, examine our wheels 
at every post-house, reached," etc. "After consultation with a 



CHRISTOPHER PEASE CRANCH. 



mechanic at Heidelberg, and rinding that," etc. The last sentence 
should read, " Finding, after consultation," etc. — the " and" would 
thus be avoided. Those in the two sentences first quoted are ob- 
viously pleonastic. Mr. Cary, in fact, abounds very especially in 
superfluities — (as here, for example, " He seated himself at a piano 
that was near the front of the stage") — and, to speak the truth, is 
continually guilty of all kinds of grammatical improprieties. I re- 
peat that, in this respect, he is decent, and no more. 

Mr. Cary is what Doctor Griswold calls a " gentleman of elegant 
leisure." He is wealthy and much addicted to letters and virtu. 
For a long time he was President of the Phoenix Bank of New 
York, and the principal part of his life has been devoted to busi- 
ness. There is nothing remarkable about his personal appearance. 



CHRISTOPHER PEASE CRANCH. 

The Reverend C. P. Cranch is one of the least intolerable of the 
school of Boston transcendentalists — and, in fact, I believe that he 
has at last " come out from among them," abandoned their doc- 
trines (whatever they are) and given up their company in disgust. 
He was at one time one of the most noted, and undoubtedly one of 
the least absurd contributors to " The Dial," but has reformed his ha- 
bits of thought and speech, domiciliated himself in New York, and 
set up the easel of an artist in one of the Gothic chambers of the 
University. 

About two years ago a volume of " Poems by Christopher Pease 
Cranch" was published by Carey & Hart. It was most unmerci- 
fully treated by the critics, and much injustice, in my opinion, was 
done to the poet. He seems to me to possess unusual vivacity of 
fancy and dexterity of expression, while his versification is remark- 
able for its accuracy, vigor, and even for its originality of effect. 
I might say, perhaps, rather more than all this, and maintain that 
he has imagination if he would only condescend to employ it, 
which he will not, or would not until lately — the word-compoun- 
ders and quibble concoctors of Frogpondium having inoculated 
him with a preference for Imagination's half sister, the Cinderella 
Fancy. Mr. Cranch has seldom contented himself with harmo- 



10 CHRISTOPHER PEASE CRANCH. 

nious combinations of thought. There must always be, to afford 
him perfect satisfaction, a certain amount of the odd, of the whim- 
sical, of the affected, of the bizarre. He is full of absurd conceits 
as Cowley or Donne, with this difference, that the conceits of these 
latter are Euphuisms beyond redemption — flat, irremediable, self- 
contented nonsensicalities, and in so much are good of their kind ; 
but the conceits of Mr. Cranch are, for the most part, conceits in- 
tentionally manufactured, for conceit's sake, out of the material 
for properly imaginative, harmonious, proportionate, or poetical 
ideas. We see every moment that he has been at uncommon 
pains to make a fool of himself. 

But perhaps I am wrong in supposing that I am at all in con- 
dition to decide on the merits of Mr. C.'s poetry, which is pro- 
fessedly addressed to the few. " Him we will seek," says the 
poet — 

Him we will seek, and none but him, 

"Whose inward sense hath not grown dim ; 

Whose soul is steeped in Nature's tinct, 

And to the Universal linked ; 

"Who loves the beauteous Infinite 

"With deep and ever new delight, 

And carrieth where'er he goes 

The inborn sweetness of the rose, 

The perfume as of Paradise — 

The talisman above all price — 

The optic glass that wins from far 

The meaning of the utmost star — ■ 

The key that opes the golden doors 

"Where earth and heaven have piled their stores — 

The magic ring, the enchanter's wand — 

The title-deed to "Wonder-Land — 

The wisdom that o'erlooketh sense, 

The clairvoyance of Innocence. 

This is all very well, fanciful, pretty, and neatly turned — all 
with the exception of the two last lines, and it is a pity they 
were not left out. It is laughable to see that the transcendental 
poets, if beguiled for a minute or two into respectable English 
and common sense, are always sure to remember their cue just as 
they get to the end of their song, which, by way of salvo, they 
then round off with a bit of doggerel about " wisdom that o'er- 
looketk sense" and "the clairvoyance of Innocence." It is es- 
pecially observable that, in adopting the cant of thought, the 



i 

i 



CHRISTOPHER PEASE CRANCH. 71 

cant of phraseology is adopted at the same instant. Can Mr. 
Cranch, or can anybody else, inform me why it is that, in the 
really sensible opening passages of what I have here quoted, he 
employs the modern, and only in the final couplet of goosetherum- 
foodle makes use of the obsolete terminations of verbs in the third 
person singular, present tense ? 

One of the best of Mr. Cranch 's compositions is undoubtedly 
-his poem on Niagara. It has some natural thoughts, and grand 
ones, suiting the subject ; but then they are more than half- 
divested of their nature by the attempt at adorning them with 
oddity of expression. Quaintness is an admissible and important 
adjunct to ideality — an adjunct whose value has been long misap- 
prehended — but in picturing the sublime it is altogether out of 
place. What idea of power, of grandeur, for example, can any- 
human being connect even with Niagara, when Niagara is de- 
scribed in language so trippingly fantastical, so palpably adapted 
to a purpose, as that which follows ? 

I stood upon a speck of ground ; 
Before me fell a stormy ocean. 
I was like a captive bound ; 
And around 
A universe of sound 
Troubled the heavens with ever-quivering motion. 

Down, down forever — down, down forever — 

Something falling, falling, falling ; 
Up, up forever — up, up forever, 
Resting never, 
Boiling up forever, 
Steam-clouds shot up with thunder-bursts appalling. 

It is difficult to conceive anything more ludicrously out of 
keeping than the thoughts of these stanzas and the petit-maitre, 
fidgety, hop-skip-and-jurap air of the words and the Liliputian 
parts of the versification. 

A somewhat similar metre is adopted by Mr. C. in his " Lines 
on Hearing Triumphant Music," but as the subject is essentially 
different, so the effect is by no means so displeasing. I copy one 
of the stanzas as the noblest individual passage which I can find 
among all the poems of its author. 



72 SARAH MARGARET FULLER. 

That glorious strain ! 

Oh, from my brain 
I see the shadow flitting like scared ghosts. 

A light — a light 

Shines in to-night 
Hound the good angels trooping to their posts, 

And the black cloud is rent in twain 

Before the ascending strain. 

Mr. Cranch is well educated, and quite accomplished. Like 
Mr. Osborn, he is musician, painter, and poet, being in each ca- 
pacity very respectably successful. 

He is about thirty-three or four years of age ; in height, perhaps 
five feet eleven ; athletic ; front face not unhandsome — the fore- 
head evincing intellect, and the smile pleasant ; but the profile is 
marred by the turning up of the nose, and, altogether is hard and 
disagreeable. His eyes and hair are dark brown — the latter worn 
short, slightly inclined to curl. Thick whiskers meeting under 
the chin, and much out of keeping with the shirtcollar a la By- 
ron. Dresses with marked plainness. He is married. 



SARAH MARGARET FULLER. 

Miss Fuller was at one time editor, or one of the editors of 
" The Dial," to which she contributed many of the most forcible 
and certainly some of the most peculiar papers. She is known, 
too, by " Summer on the Lakes," a remarkable assemblage of 
sketches, issued in 1844, by Little & Brown, of Boston. More 
lately she has published " Woman in the Nineteenth Century," a 
work which has occasioned much discussion, having had the good 
fortune to be warmly abused and chivalrously defended. At 
present, she is assistant editor of " The New York Tribune," or 
rather a salaried contributor to that journal, for which she has 
furnished a great variety of matter, chiefly notices of new books, 
etc., etc., her articles being designated by an asterisk. Two of 
the best of them were a review of Professor Longfellow's late 
magnificent edition of his own works, (with a portrait,) and an 
appeal to the public in behalf of her friend Harro Harring. The 
review did her infinite credit ; it was frank, candid, independent — 
in even ludicrous contrast to the usual mere glorifications of the 






SARAH MARGARET FULLER. 73 

day, giving honor only where honor was due, yet evincing the 
most thorough capacity to appreciate and the most sincere inten- 
tion to place in the fairest light the real and idiosyncratic merits 
of the poet. 

In my opinion it is one of the very few reviews of Longfellow's 
poems, ever published in America, of which the critics have not 
had abundant reason to be ashamed. Mr. Longfellow is entitled 
to a certain and very distinguished rank among the poets of his 
country, but that country is disgraced by the evident toadyism 
which would award to his social position and influence, to his fine 
paper and large type, to his morocco binding and gilt edges, to 
his flattering portrait of himself, and to the illustrations of his 
poems by Huntingdon, that amount of indiscriminate approbation 
which neither could nor would have been given to the poems 
themselves. 

The defence of Harro Harring, or rather the Philipic against 
those who were doing him wrong, was one of the most eloquent 
and well-put articles I have ever yet seen in a newspaper. 

" Woman in the Nineteenth Century " is a book which few 
women in the country could have written, and no woman in the 
country would have published, with the exception of Miss Fuller. 
In the way of independence, of unmitigated radicalism, it is one 
of the " Curiosities of American Literature," and Doctor Griswold 
should include it in his book. I need scarcely say that the essay 
is nervous, forcible, thoughtful, suggestive, brilliant, and to a cer- 
tain extent scholar-like — for all that Miss Fuller produces is en- 
titled to these epithets — but I must say that the conclusions 
reached are only in part my own. Not that they are too bold, 
by any means — too novel, too startling, or too dangerous in their 
consequences, but that in their attainment too many premises 
have been distorted, and too many analogical inferences left alto- 
gether out of sight. I mean to say that the intention of the 
Deity as regards sexual differences — an intention which can be 
distinctly comprehended only by throwing the exterior (more sen- 
sitive) portions of the mental retina casually over the wide field 
of universal analogy — I mean to say that this intention has not 
been sufficiently considered. Miss Fuller has erred, too, through 
her own excessive objectiveness. She judges woman by the heart 

Vol. III.— 4 



74 SARAH MARGARET FULLER. 



and intellect of Miss Fuller, but there are not more than one or 
two dozen Miss Fullers on the whole face of the earth. Holding 
these opinions in regard to " Woman in the Nineteenth Century," 
I still feel myself called upon to disavow the silly, condemnatory 
criticism of the work which appeared in one of the earlier num- 
bers of " The Broadway Journal." That article was not written 
by myself, and was written by my associate, Mr. Briggs. 

The most favorable estimate of Miss Fuller's genius (for high 
genius she unquestionably possesses) is to be obtained, perhaps, 
from her contributions to " The Dial," and from her " Summer on 
the Lakes." Many of the descriptions in this volume are unri- 
valled for graphicality, (why is there not such a word ?) for the 
force with which they convey the true by the novel or unexpected, 
by the introduction of touches which other artists would be sure 
to omit as irrelevant to the subject. This faculty, too, springs 
from her subjectiveness, which leads her to paint a scene less by 
its features than by its effects. 

Here, for example, is a portion of her account of Niagara : — 

Daily these proportions widened and towered more and more upon my 
sight, and I got at last a proper foreground for these sublime distances. Be- 
fore coming away, I think I really saw the full wonder of the scene. After 
awhile it so drew me into itself as to inspire an undefined dread, such as I 
never knew before, such as may be felt when death is about to usher us into a 
new existence. The perpetual trampling of the waters seized my senses. / 
felt that no other sound, however near, could be heard, and would start and 
look behind me for a foe. I realized the identity of that mood of nature 
in which these waters were poured down with such absorbing force, with 
that in which the Indian was shaped on the same soil. For continually upon 
my mind came, unsought and unwelcome, images, such as had never haunted 
it before, of naked savages stealing behind me with uplifted tomahawks. 
Again and again this illusion recurred, and even after I had thought it over, 
and tried to shake it off, I could not help starting and looking behind me. 
What I liked best was to sit on Table Rock close to the great fall ; there all 
power of observing details, all separate consciousness was quite lost. 

The truthfulness of the passages italicized will be felt by all ; 
the feelings described are, perhaps, experienced by every (imagi- 
native) person who visits the fall ; but most persons, through 
predominant subjectiveness, would scarcely be conscious of the 
feelings, or, at best, would never think of employing them in an 
attempt to convey to others an impression of the scene. Hence 
so many desperate failures to convey it on the part of ordinary 



i 



SARAH MARGARET FULLER. 75 

tourists. Mr. William W. Lord, to be sure, in his poem " Niag- 
ara," is sufficiently objective ; he describes not the fall, but very 
properly the effect of the fall upon him. He says that it made 
him think of his own greatness, of his own superiority, and so 
forth, and so forth ; and it is only when we come to think that 
the thought of Mr. Lord's greatness is quite idiosyncratic, confined 
exclusively to Mr. Lord, that we are in condition to understand 
how, in despite of his objectiveness, he has failed to convey an 
idea of anything beyond one Mr. William W. Lord. 

From the essay entitled " Philip Van Artevelde," I copy a par- 
agraph which will serve at once to exemplify Miss Fuller's more 
earnest (declamatory) style, and to show the tenor of her pros- 
pective speculations : — 

At Chicago I read again " Philip Van Artevelde," and certain passages in 
it will always be in my mind associated with the deep sound of the lake, as 
heard in the night. I used to read a short time at night, and then open the 
blind to look out. The moon would be full upon the lake, and the calm 
breath, pure light, and the deep voice, harmonized well with the thought of 
the Flemish hero. "When will this country have such a man ? It is what she 
needs — no thin Idealist, no coarse Realist, but a man whose eye reads the 
heavens while his feet step firmly on the ground, and his hands are strong 
and dexterous in the use of human instruments. A man, religious, virtuous, 
and — sagacious ; a man of universal sympathies, but self-possessed ; a man 
who knows the region of emotion, though he is not its slave ; a man to whom 
this world is no mere spectacle or fleeting shadow, but a great, solemn game, 
to be played with good heed, for its stakes are of eternal value, yet who, if 
his own play be true, heeds not what he loses by the falsehood of others. A 
man who fives from the past, yet knows that its honey can but moderately 
avail him; whose comprehensive eye scans the present, neither infatuated by 
its golden lures nor chilled by its many ventures ; who possesses prescience, 
as the wise man must, but not so far as to be driven mad to-day by the gift 
which discerns to-morrow. When there is such a man for America, the thought 
which urges her on will be expressed. 

From what I have quoted a general conception of the prose 
style of the authoress may be gathered. Her manner, however, 
is infinitely varied. It is always forcible — but I am not sure that 
it is always anything else, unless I say picturesque. It rather in- 
dicates than evinces scholarship. Perhaps only the scholastic, or, 
more properly, those accustomed to look narrowly at the structure 
of phrases, would be willing to acquit her of ignorance of gram- 
mar — would be willing to attribute her slovenliness to disregard 
of the shell in anxiety for the kernel ; or to waywardness, or to 
affectation, or to blind reverence for Carlyle — would be able to 



76 SARAH MARGARET FULLER. 

detect, in her strange and continual inaccuracies, a capacity for 
the accurate. 

" I cannot sympathize with such an apprehension ; the spectacle is capable 
to swallow up all such objects." 

" It is fearful, too, to know, as you look, that whatever has been swallowed 
by the cataract, is like to rise suddenly to light." 

" I took our mutual friends to see her." 

" It was always obvious that they had nothing in common between them." 

" The Indian cannot be looked at truly except by a poetic eye." 

" McKenney's Tour to the Lakes gives some facts not to be met with else- 
where." 

" There is that mixture of culture and rudeness in the aspect of things as 
gives a feeling of freedom," etc., etc., etc. 

These are merely a few, a very few instances, taken at random 
from among a multitude of wilful murders committed by Miss 
Fuller on the American of President Polk. She uses, too, the 
word " ignore," a vulgarity adopted only of late days (and to no 
good purpose, since there is no necessity for it) from the barbar- 
isms of the law, and makes no scruple of giving the Yankee in- 
terpretation to the verbs " witness " and " realize," to say nothing 
of " use," as in the sentence, " I used to read a short time at 
night." It will not do to say, in defence of such words, that in 
such senses they may be found in certain dictionaries — in that of 
Bolles', for instance ; — some kind of " authority " may be found 
for any kind of vulgarity under the sun. 

In spite of these things, however, and of her frequent unjusti- 
fiable Carlyleisms, (such as that of writing sentences which are 
no sentences, since, to be parsed, reference must be had to sen- 
tences preceding,) the style of Miss Fuller is one of the very best 
with which I am acquainted. In general effect, I know no style 
which surpasses it. It is singularly piquant, vivid, terse, bold, 
luminous — leaving details out of sight, it is everything that a 
style need be. 

I believe that Miss Fuller has written much poetry, although 
she has published little. That little is tainted with the affectation 
of the transcendentalists, (I used this term, of course, in the sense 
which the public of late days seem resolved to give it,) but is 
brimful of the poetic sentiment. Here, for example, is something 
in Coleridge's manner, of which the author of " Genevieve " 
might have had no reason to be ashamed : — 



SARAH MARGARET FULLER. 77 

A maiden sat beneath a tree; 
Tear-bedewed her pale cheeks be, 
And she sighed heavily. 

From forth the wood into the light 
A hunter strides with carol light, 
And a glance so bold and bright. 

He careless stopped and eyed the maid: 
" Why weepest thou ?" he gently said ; 
" I love thee well, be not afraid." 

He takes her hand and leads her on — 
She should have waited there alone, 
For he was not her chosen one. 

He leans her head upon his breast — 
She knew 'twas not her home of rest, 
But, ah, she had been sore distrest. 

The sacred stars looked sadly down ; 
The parting moon appeared to frown, 
To see thus dimmed the diamond crown. 

Then from the thicket starts a deer — 
The huntsman, seizing on his spear 
Cries, " Maiden, wait thou for me here." 

She sees him vanish into night — 
She starts from sleep in deep affright, 
For it was not her own true knight. 

Though but in dream Gunhilda failed — 
Though but a fancied ill assailed — 
Though she but fancied fault bewailed — 

Yet thought of day makes dream of night ; 
She is not worthy of the knight ; 
The inmost altar burns not bright. 

If loneliness thou canst not bear — 
Cannot the dragon's venom dare — 
Of the pure meed thou shouldst despair. 

Now sadder that lone maiden sighs ; 
Far bitterer tears profane her eyes ; 
Crushed in the dust her heart's flower liea 

To show the evident carelessness with which this poem was 
constructed, I have italicized an identical rhyme (of about the 
same force in versification as an identical proposition in logic) and 
two grammatical improprieties. To lean is a neuter verb, and 
" seizing on " is not properly to be called a pleonasm, merely be- 
cause it is — nothing at all. The concluding line is difficult of 
pronunciation through excess of consonants. I should have pre- 



18 SARAH MARGARET FULLER. 

ferred, indeed, the ante-penultimate tristich as the finale of the 
poem. 

The supposition that the book of an author is a thing apart 
from the author's self, is, I think, ill-founded. The soul is a ci- 
pher, in the sense of a cryptograph ; and the shorter a crypto- 
graph is, the more difficulty there is in its comprehension— at a 
certain point of brevity it would bid defiance to an army of 
Champollions. And thus he who has written very little, may in 
that little either conceal his spirit or convey quite an erroneous 
idea of it — of his acquirements, talents, temper, manner, tenor 
and depth (or shallowness) of thought — in a word, of his charac- 
ter, of himself. But this is impossible with him who has written 
much. Of such a person we get, from his books, not merely a 
just, but the most just representation. Bulwer, the individual, 
personal man, in a green velvet waistcoat and amber gloves, is 
not by any means the veritable Sir Edward Lytton, who is dis- 
coverable only in " Ernest Maltravers," where his soul is deliber- 
ately and nakedly set forth. And who would ever know Dickens 
by looking at him or talking with him, or doing anything with 
him except reading his " Curiosity Shop ?" "What poet, in espe- 
cial, but must feel at least the better portion of himself more 
fairly represented in even his commonest sonnet, (earnestly writ- 
ten,) than in his most elaborate or most intimate personalities ? 

I put all this as a general proposition, to which Miss Fuller 
affords a marked exception — to this extent, that her personal char- 
acter and her printed book are merely one and the same thino-. 
We get access to her soul as directly from the one as from the 
other — no more readily from this than from that — easily from 
either. Her acts are bookish, and her books are less thoughts than 
acts. Her literary and her conversational manner are identical. 
Here is a passage from her " Summer on the Lakes :" — 

The rapids enchanted me far beyond what I expected ; they are so swift 
that they cease to seem so — you can think only of their beauty. The fountain 
beyond the Moss islands I discovered for myself, and thought it for some 
time an accidental beauty which it would not do to leave, lest I might never 
see it again. After I found it permanent, I returned many times to watch 
the play of its crest. In the little waterfall beyond, Nature seems, as she 
often does, to have made a study for some larger design. She delights in 
this — a sketch within a sketch — a dream within a dream. Wherever we see 
it, the lines of the great buttress in the fragment of stone, the hues of the 






JAMES LAWSOK 79 

"waterfall, copied in the flowers that star its bordering mosses, we are delight- 
ed; for all the lineaments become fluent, and we mould the scene in conge- 
nial thought with its genius. 

Now all this is precisely as Miss Fuller would speak it. She is 
perpetually saying just such things in just such words. To get 
the conversational woman in the mind's eye, all that is needed is 
to imagine her reciting the paragraph just quoted : but first let 
us have the personal woman. She is of the medium height ; 
nothing remarkable about the figure ; a profusion of lustrous light 
hair; eyes a bluish gray, full of fire; capacious forehead; the 
mouth when in repose indicates profound sensibility, capacity for 
affection, for love — when moved by a slight smile, it becomes 
even beautiful in the intensity of this expression ; but the upper 
lip, as if impelled by the action of involuntary muscles, habitually 
uplifts itself, conveying the impression of a sneer. Imagine, now, 
a person of this description looking you at one moment earnestly 
in the face, at the next seeming to look only within her own spirit 
or at the wall ; moving nervously every now and then in her chair ; 
speaking in a high key, but musically, deliberately, (not hurriedly 
or loudly,) with a delicious distinctness of enunciation— speaking, 
I say, the paragraph in question, and emphasizing the words which 
I have italicized, not by impulsion of the breath, (as is usual,) but 
by drawing them out as long as possible, nearly closing her eyes 
the while — imagine all this, and we have both the woman and 
the authoress before us. 



JAMES LAWSON. 

Mr. Lawson has published, I believe, only " Giordano," a tra- 
gedy, and two volumes entitled " Tales and Sketches by a Cos- 
mopolite." The former was condemned (to use a gentle word) 
some years ago at the Park Theatre ; and never was condemna- 
tion more religiously deserved. The latter are in so much more 
tolerable than the former, that they contain one non-execrable 
thing — " The Dapper Gentleman's Story" — in manner, as in title, 
an imitation of one of Irving's " Tales of a Traveller." 

I mention Mr. L., however, not on account of his litorary la- 



80 CAROLINE M. KIRKLAND. 

bors, but because, although a Scotchman, he has always professed 
to have greatly at heart the welfare of American letters. He is 
much in the society of authors and booksellers, converses fluent- 
ly, tells a good story, is of social habits, and, with no taste what- 
ever, is quite enthusiastic on all topics appertaining to Taste. 



CAROLINE M. KIRKLAND. 

Mrs. Kirkland's " New Home," published under the nom de 
plume of " Mary Clavers," wrought an undoubted sensation. The 
cause lay not so much in picturesque description, in racy humor, 
or in animated individual portraiture, as in truth and novelty. 
The west at the time was a field comparatively untrodden by the 
sketcher or the novelist. In certain works, to be sure, we had ob- 
tained brief glimpses of character strange to us sojourners in the 
civilized east, but to Mrs. Kirkland alone we were indebted for 
our acquaintance with the home and home-life of the backwoods- 
man. With a fidelity and vigor that prove her pictures to be 
taken from the very life, she has represented "scenes" that could 
have occurred only as and where she has described them. She 
has placed before us the veritable settlers of the forest, with all 
their peculiarities, national and individual ; their free and fearless 
spirit ; their homely utilitarian views ; their shrewd out-looking 
for self-interest ; their thrifty care and inventions multiform ; their 
coarseness of manner, united with real delicacy and substantial 
kindness when their sympathies are called into action — in a word, 
with all the characteristics of the Yankee, in a region where the 
salient points of character are unsmoothed by contact with society. 
So lifelike were her representations that they have been appro- 
priated as individual portraits by many who have been disposed 
to plead, trumpet-tongued, against what they supposed to be 
" the deep damnation of their taking-off." 

" Forest Life" succeeded " A New Home," and was read with 
equal interest. It gives us, perhaps, more of the philosophy of 
western life, but has the same freshness, freedom, piquancy. Of 
course, a truthful picture of pioneer habits could never be given 
in any grave history or essay so well as in the form of narration, 



/i 



CAROLINE M. KIRKLAND. 81 

where each character is permitted to develope itself; narration, 
therefore, was very properly adopted by Mrs. Kirkland in both 
the books just mentioned, and even more entirely in her later 
volume, " Western Clearings." This is the title of a collection of 
tales, illustrative, in general, of Western manners, customs, ideas. 
" The Land Fever" is a story of the wild days when the madness 
of speculation in land was at its height. It is a richly characteris- 
tic sketch, as is also " The Ball at Thram's Huddle." Only those 
who have had the fortune to visit or live in the " back settlements" 
can enjoy such pictures to the full. " Chances and Changes" and 
" Love vs. Aristocracy" are more regularly constructed tales, with 
the " universal passion" as the moving power, but colored with 
the glowing hues of the west. " The Bee Tree" exhibits a striking 
but too numerous class among the settlers, and explains, also, the 
depth of the bitterness that grows out of an unprosperous condi- 
tion in that " Paradise of the Poor." " Ambuscades" and " Half- 
Lengths from Life," I remember as two piquant sketches to which 
an annual, a year or two ago, was indebted for a most unusual 
sale among the conscious and pen-dreading denizens of the west. 
" Half-Lengths" turns on the trying subject of caste. " The 
Schoolmaster's Progress" is full of truth and humor. The western 
pedagogue, the stiff, solitary nondescript figure in the drama of a 
new settlement, occupying a middle position between " our folks" 
and " company," and " boarding round," is irresistibly amusing, 
and cannot fail to be recognised as the representative of a class. 
The occupation, indeed, always seems to mould those engaged in 
it — they all soon, like Master Horner, learn to " know well what 
belongs to the pedagogical character, and that facial solemnity 
stands high on the list of indispensable qualifications." The spell- 
ing-school, also, is a " new country" feature which we owe Mrs. 
Kirkland many thanks for recording. The incidents of " An Em- 
broidered Fact" are singular and picturesque, but not particularly 
illustrative of the " Clearings." The same may be said of " Bitter 
Fruits from Chance-Sown Seeds ;" but this abounds in capital 
touches of character : all the horrors of the tale are brought about 
through suspicion of pride, an accusation as destructive at the west 
as that of witchcraft in olden times, or the cry of mad dog in 
modern. 

4* 



S2 CAROLINE M. KIRKLAND. 

In the way of absolute books, Mrs. Kirkland, I believe, has 
achieved nothing beyond the three volumes specified, (with an- 
other lately issued by Wiley and Putnam,) but she is a very con- 
stant contributor to the magazines. Unquestionably, she is one 
of our best writers, has a province of her own, and in that province 
has few equals. Her most noticeable trait is a certain freshness 
of style, seemingly drawn, as her subjects in general, from the 
west. In the second place is to be observed a species of wit, ap- 
proximating humor, and so interspersed with pure fun, that " wit," 
after all, is nothing like a definition of it. To give an example — 
" Old Thoughts on the New Year" commences with a quotation 
from Tasso's " Aminta :" — 

II mondo invecchia 

E invecchiando intristisce ; 

and the following is given as a " free translation :" — 

The world is growing older 

And wiser day by day ; 
Everybody knows beforehand 

What you're going to say. 
"We used to laugh and frolic — 

Now we must behave : 
Poor old Fun is dead and buried — 

Pride dug his grave. 

This, if I am not mistaken, is the only specimen of poetry as yet 
given by Mrs. Kirkland to the world. She has afforded us no 
means of judging in respect to her inventive powers, although 
fancy, and even imagination, are apparent in everything she does. 
Her perceptive faculties enable her to describe with great verisimi- 
litude. Her mere style is admirable, lucid, terse, full of variety, 
faultlessly pure, and yet bold — so bold as to appear heedless of 
the ordinary decora of composition. In even her most reckless 
sentences, however, she betrays the woman of refinement, of ac- 
complishment, of unusually thorough education. There are a 
great many points in which her general manner resembles that of 
Willis, whom she evidently admires. Indeed, it would not be 
difficult to pick out from her works an occasional Willisism, not 
less palpable than happy. For example — 

Peaches were like little green velvet bzittons ivhen George was first mis- 
taken for Doctor Beaseley, and before they were ripe he, (fee. 



PROSPER M. WETMORE. 83 

And again — 

Mr. Hammond is fortunately settled in our neighborhood, for the present 
at least ; and he has the neatest little cottage in the world, standing, too, 
under a very tall oak, which bends kindly over it, looking like the Princess 
Glumdalclitch inclining her ear to the box which contained her pet Gulliver. 

Mrs. Kirkland's personal manner is an echo of her literary one. 
She is frank, cordial, yet sufficiently dignified — even bold, yet 
especially ladylike ; converses with remarkable accuracy as well as 
fluency ; is brilliantly witty, and now and then not a little sarcas- 
tic, but a general amiability prevails. 

She is rather above the medium height ; eyes and hair dark ; 
features somewhat small, with no marked characteristics, but the 
whole countenance beams with benevolence and intellect. 



PROSPER M. WETMORE. 

General Wetmore occupied some years ago quite a conspicu- 
ous position among the litterateurs of New York city. His name 
was seen very frequently in " The Mirror," and in other similar 
journals, in connexion with brief poems and occasional prose com- 
positions. His only publication in volume form, I believe, is 
" The Battle of Lexington and other Poems," a collection of con- 
siderable merit, and one which met a very cordial reception from 
the press. 

Much of this cordiality, however, is attributable to the personal 
popularity of the man, to his facility in making acquaintances, and 
his tact in converting them into unwavering friends. 

General Wetmore has an exhaustless fund of vitality. His 
energy, activity and indefatigability are proverbial, not less than 
his peculiar sociability. These qualities give him unusual in- 
fluence among his fellow-citizens, and have constituted him (as 
precisely the same traits have constituted his friend General Mor- 
ris,) one of a standing committee for the regulation of a certain 
class of city affairs — such, for instance, as the getting up a com- 
plimentary benefit, or a public demonstration of respect for some 
deceased worthy, or a ball and dinner to Mr. Irving or Mr. 
Dickens. 

Mr. Wetmore is not only a General, but Naval Officer of the 



84 EMMA C. EMBURY. 



Port of New York, Member of the Board of Trade, one of the 
Council of the Art Union, one of the Corresponding Committee 
of the Historical Society, and of more other committees than I 
can just now remember. His manners are recherches, courteous 
— a little in the old school way. He is sensitive, punctilious; 
speaks well, roundly, fluently, plausibly, and is skilled in pouring 
oil upon the waters of stormy debate. 

He is, perhaps, fifty years of age, but has a youthful look ; is' 
about five feet eight in height, slender, neat, with an air of mili- 
tary compactness ; looks especially well on horseback. 



EMMA C EMBURY. 

| 

Mrs. Embury is one of the most noted, and certainly one of the 
most meritorious of our female litterateurs. She has been many 
years before the public — her earliest compositions, I believe, hav- 
ing been contributed to the " New York Mirror" under the nom 
de plume " Ian the." They attracted very general attention at the 
time of their appearance and materially aided the paper. They 
were subsequently, with some other pieces, published in volume 
form, with the title " Guido and other Poems." The book has 
been long out of print. Of late days its author has written but 
little poetry — that little, however, has at least indicated a poetic 
capacity of no common order. 

Yet as a poetess she is comparatively unknown, her reputation 
in this regard having been quite overshadowed by that whix?h she 
has acquired as a writer of tales. In this latter capacity she has, 
upon the whole, no equal among her sex in America — certainly 
no superior. She is not so vigorous as Mrs. Stephens, nor so 
vivacious as Miss Chubbuck, nor so caustic as Miss Leslie, nor so 
dignified as Miss Sedgwick, nor so graceful, fanciful and spirituelle 
as Mrs. Osgood, but is deficient in none of the qualities for which 
these ladies are noted, and in certain particulars surpasses them 
all. Her subjects are fresh, if not always vividly original, and 
she manages them with more skill than is usually exhibited by 
our magazinists. She has also much imagination and sensibility, 
while her style is puie, Ernest, and devoid of verbiage and ex- 



EPES SARGENT. 85 



aggeration. I make a point of reading all tales to which I see the 
name of Mrs. Embury appended. The story by which she has 
attained most reputation is "Constance Latimer, the Blind Girl." 

Mrs. E. is a daughter of Doctor Manly, an eminent physician 
of New York city. At an early age she married a gentleman of 
some wealth and of education, as well as of tastes akin to her 
own. She is noted for her domestic virtues no less than for liter- 
ary talents and acquirements. 

She is about the medium height ; complexion, eyes, and hair, 
light ; arched eyebrows ; Grecian nose ; the mouth a fine one, 
and indicative of firmness ; the whole countenance pleasing, in- 
tellectual, and expressive. The portrait in " Graham's Magazine" 
for January, 1843, has no resemblance to her whatever. 



EPES SARGENT 



Mr. Sargent is well known to the public as the author of 
" Velasco, a Tragedy," " The Light of the Light-house, with 
other Poems," one or two short nouvelettes, and numerous con- 
tributions to the periodicals. He was also the editor of " Sa? 
gent's Magazine," a monthly work, which had the misfortune or 
falling between two stools, never having been able to make up its 
mind whether to be popular with the three or dignified with the 
five dollar journals. It was a "happy medium'''' between the 
two classes, and met the fate of all happy media in dying, as 
well through lack of foes as of friends. In medio tutissimus ibis 
is the worst advice in the world for the editor of a magazine. Its 
observance proved the downfall of Mr. Lowell and his really merito- 
rious " Pioneer." 

"Velasco" has received some words of commendation from 
the author of " Ion," and I am ashamed to say, owes most of its 
home appreciation to this circumstance. Mr. Talfourd's play has, 
itself, little truly dramatic, with much picturesque and more poeti- 
cal value; its author, nevertheless, is better entitled to respect as 
a dramatist than as a critic of dramas. " Velasco," compared 
with American tragedies generally, is a good tragedy — indeed, an 
excellent one, but, positively considered, its merits are very incon- 
siderable. It has many of the traits of Mrs. Mowatt's " Fashion," 



86 EPES SARGENT. 



to which, in its mode of construction, its scenic effects, and several 
other points, it bears as close a resemblance as, in the nature of 
things, it could very well bear. It is by no means improbable, 
however, that Mrs. Mowatt received some assistance from Mr. 
Sargent in the composition of her comedy, or at least was guided 
by his advice in many particulars of technicality. 

"Shells and Sea Weeds," a series of brief poems, recording 
the incidents of a voyage to Cuba, is, I think, the best work in 
verse of its author, and evinces a fine fancy, with keen apprecia- 
tion of the beautiful in natural scenery. Mr. Sargent is fond of 
sea-pieces, and paints them with skill, flooding them with that 
warmth and geniality which are their character and their due. 
"A Life on the Ocean Wave" has attained great popularity, but 
is by no means so good as the less lyrical compositions, " A Calm," 
"The Gale," " Tropical Weather," and " A Night Storm at Sea." 

" The Light of the Light-house" is a spirited poem, with many 
musical and fanciful passages, well expressed. For example — 

But, oh, Aurora's crimson light, 

That makes the watch-fire dim, 
Is not a more transporting sight 

Than Ellen is to him. 
He pineth not for fields and brooks, 

Wild flowers and singing birds, 
For summer smileth in her looks 

And singeth in her words. 

There is something of the Dibdin spirit throughout the poem, 
and, indeed, throughout all the sea poems of Mr. Sargent — a little 
too much of it, perhaps. 

His prose is not quite so meritorious as his poetry. He writes 
"easily," and is apt at burlesque and sarcasm — both rather broad 
than original. Mr. Sargent has an excellent memory for good 
hits, and no little dexterity in their application. To those who 
meddle little with books, some of his satirical papers must appear 
brilliant. In a word, he is one of the most prominent members 
of a very extensive American family — the men of industry, talent 
and tact. 

In stature he is short — not more than five feet five — but well 
proportioned. His face is a fine one ; the features regular and 
expressive. His demeanor is very gentlemanly. Unmarried, and 
about thirty years of age. 






FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD. 87 



FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD. 

Mrs. Osgood, for the last three or four years, has been rapidly- 
attaining distinction ; and this, evidently, with no effort at at- 
taining it. She seems, in fact, to have no object in view beyond 
that of giving voice to the fancies or the feelings of the moment. 
"Necessity," says the proverb, "is the mother of Invention;" 
and the invention of Mrs. 0., at least, springs plainly from neces- 
sity — from the necessity of invention. Not to write poetry — not 
to act it, think it, dream it, and be it, is entirely out of her 
power. 

It may be questioned whether with more industry, more 
method, more definite purpose, more ambition, Mrs. Osgood would 
have made a more decided impression on the public mind. She 
might, upon the whole, have written better poems ; but the 
chances are that she would have failed in conveying so vivid and 
so just an idea of her powers as a poet. The warm abandonnement 
of her style — that charm which now so captivates — is but a por- 
tion and a consequence of her unworldly nature — of her disre- 
gard of mere fame ; but it affords us glimpses, which we could 
not otherwise have obtained, of a capacity for accomplishing what 
she has not accomplished, and in all probability never will. In 
the world of poetry, however, there is already more than enough 
of uncongenial ambition and pretence. 

Mrs. Osgood has taken no care whatever of her literary fame. 
A great number of her finest compositions, both in verse and 
prose, have been written anonymously, and are now lying perdus 
about the country, in out-of-the-way nooks and corners. Many a 
goodly reputation has been reared upon a far more unstable basis 
than her unclaimed and uncollected "fugitive pieces." 

Her first volume, I believe, was published, seven or eight years 
ago, by Edward Churton, of London, during the residence of the 
poetess in that city. I have now lying before me a second edition 
of it, dated 1842 — a beautifully printed book, dedicated to the 
Reverend Hobard Caunter. It contains a number of what the 
Bostonians call "juvenile" poems, written when Mrs. O., (then 



FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD. 



Miss Locke,) could not have been more than thirteen, and evincing 
unusual precocity. The leading piece is " Elfrida, a Dramatic 
Poem," but in many respects well entitled to the appellation, 
" drama." I allude chiefly to the passionate expression of par- 
ticular portions, to delineation of character, and to occasional 
scenic effect : — in construction, or plot — in general conduct and 
plausibility, the play fails ; comparatively, of course — for the hand 
of genius is evinced throughout. 

The story is the well known one of Edgar, Elfrida, and Earl 
Athelwood. The king, hearing of Elfrida's extraordinary beauty, 
commissions his favorite, Athelwood, to visit her and ascertain if 
report speaks truly of her charms. The earl, becoming himself 
enamored, represents the lady as anything but beautiful or agree- 
able. The king is satisfied. Athelwood soon afterward woos and 
weds Elfrida — giving Edgar to understand that the heiress' wealth 
is the object. The true state of the case, however, is betrayed by 
an enemy ; and the monarch resolves to visit the earl at his castle 
and to judge for himself. Hearing of this resolve, Athelwood, in 
despair, confesses to his wife his duplicity, and entreats her to 
render null as far as possible the effect of her charms by dressing 
with unusual plainness. This the wife promises to do ; but, fired 
with ambition and resentment at the wrong done her, arrays her- 
self in her most magnificent and becoming costume. The king 
is charmed, and the result is the destruction of Athelwood and 
the elevation of Elfrida to the throne. 

These incidents are well adapted to dramatic purposes, and with 
more of that art which Mrs. Osgood does not possess, she might 
have woven them into a tragedy which the world would not will- 
ingly let die. As it is, she has merely succeeded in showing what 
she might, should, and could have done, and yet, unhappily, did 
not. 

The character of Elfrida is the bright point of the play. Her 
beauty and consciousness of it — her indignation and uncompro- 
mising ambition — are depicted with power. There is a fine blend- 
ing of the poetry of passion and the passion of poetry, in the lines 
which follow : 



Why even now he bends 

In courtly reverence to some mincing dame, 



FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD. 89 

Haply the star of Edgar's festival, 
While I, with this high heart and queenly form, 
Pine in neglect and solitude. Shall it be ? 
Shall I not rend my fetters and be free ? 
Ay ! — be the cooing turtle-dove content, 
Safe in her own loved nest ! — the eagle soars 
On restless plumes to meet the imperial sun. 
And Edgar is my day-star in whose light 
This heart's proud wings shall yet be furled to rest. 
Why wedded I with Athelwood ? For this ? 
No ! — even at the altar when I stood — 
My hand in his, his gaze upon my cheek — 
I did forget his presence and the scene ; 
A gorgeous vision rose before mine eyes 
Of power and pomp and regal pageantry ; 
A king was at my feet and, as he knelt, 
I smiled aud, turning, met — a husband's kiss. 
But still I smiled — for in my guilty soul 
I blessed him as the being by whose means 
I should be brought within my idol's sphere — 
My haughty, glorious, brave, impassioned Edgar I 
Well I remember when these wondering eyes 
Beheld him first. I was a maiden then — 
A dreaming child — but from that thrilling hour 
I 've been a queen in visions ! 

Very similar, but even more glowing, is the love-inspired elo- 
quence of Edgar. 

Earth hath no language, love, befitting thee, 

For its own children it hath pliant speech ; 

And mortals know to call a blossom fair, 

A wavelet graceful, and a jewel rich ; 

But thou ! — oh, teach me, sweet, the angel tongue 

They talked in Heaven ere thou didst leave its bowers 

To bloom below ! 

To this Elfrida replies — 

If Athelwood should hear thee ! 

And to this, Edgar — 

Name not the felon knave to me, Elfrida ! 
My soul is flame whene'er I think of him. 
Thou lovest him not ? — oh, say thou dost not love him ! 

The answer of Elfrida at this point is profoundly true to na- 
ture, and would alone suffice to assure any critic of Mrs. Osgood's 
dramatic talent. 

When but a child I saiu thee in my dreams I 

The woman's soul here shrinks from the direct avowal of want 
of love for her husband, and flies to poetry and appeals to fate, 



90 FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD. 

by way of excusing that infidelity which is at once her glory and 
her shame. 

In general, the "situations" of "Elfrida" are improbable ' or 
ultra-romantic, and its incidents unconsequential, seldom further- 
ing the business of the play. The denouement is feeble, and its 
moral of very equivocal tendency indeed — but I have already 
shown that it is the especial office neither of poetry nor of the 
drama, to inculcate truth, unless incidentally. Mrs. Osgood, how- 
ever, although she has unquestionably failed in writing a good 
play, has, even in failing, given indication of dramatic power. 
The great tragic element, passion, breathes in every line of her 
composition, and had she but the art, or the patience, to model 
or control it, she might be eminently successful as a playwright. 
I am justified in these opinions not only by " Elfrida," but by 
"Woman's Trust, a Dramatic Sketch," included, also, in the 
English edition. 

A Masked Ball. Madelon and a Stranger in a Recess. 

Mad. — Why hast thou led me here ? 
My friends may deem it strange — unmaidenly, 
Tins lonely converse with an unknown mask. 
Yet in thy voice there is a thrilling power 
That makes me love to finger. It is like 
The tone of one far distant — only his 
Was gayer and more soft. 

Strang. Sweet Madelon ! 

Say thou wilt smile upon the passionate love 
That thou alone canst waken ! Let me hope ! 

Mad. — Hush ! hush ! I may not hear thee. Know'st thou not 
I am betrothed ? 

Strang. — Alas ! too well I know ; 

But I could tell thee such a tale of him — 

Thine early love — 'twould fire those timid eyes 

With lightning pride and anger — curl that hp — 

That gentle lip to passionate contempt 

For man's light falsehood. Even now he bends — 

Thy Rupert bends o'er one as fair as thou, 

In fond affection. Even now his heart — 

Mad. — Doth my eye flash ? — doth my lip curl with scorn ? 

'Tis scorn of thee, thou perjured stranger, not — 

Oh, not of him, the generous and the true ! 

Hast thou e'er seen my Rupert ? — hast thou met 

Those proud and fearless eyes that never quailed, 

As Falsehood quails, before another's glance — 

As thine even now are shrinking from mine own — 



FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD. 91 

The spirit beauty of that open brow — 
The noble head — the free and gallant step — 
The lofty mein whose majesty is won 
From inborn honor — hast thou seen all this ? 
And darest thou speak of faithlessness and him 
In the same idle breath ? Thou little know'st 
The strong confiding of a woman's heart, 
When woman loves as — I do. Speak no more ! 

Strang. — Deluded girl ! I tell thee he is false — 

False as yon fleeting cloud ! 

Mad. True as the sun ! 

Strang. — The very wind less wayward than his heart 1 

Mad. — The forest oak less firm ! He loved me not 

For the frail rose-hues and the fleeting light 

Of youthful loveliness — ah, many a cheek 

Of softer bloom, and many a dazzling eye 

More rich than mine may win my wanderer's gaze. 

He loved me for my love, the deep, the fond — 

For my unfaltering truth ; he cannot find — 

Rove where he will — a heart that beats for him 

"With such intense, absorbing tenderness — 

Such idolizing constancy as mine. 

Why should lie change, then ? — / am still the same. 

Strang. — Sweet infidel ! wilt thou have ruder proof ? 

Rememberest thou a little golden case 

Thy Rupert wore, in which a gem was shrined ? 

A gem I would not barter for a world — 

An angel face ; its sunny ivealth of hair 

In radiant ripples bathed the graceful throat 

And dimpled shoulders ; round the. rosy curve 

Of the sweet mouth a smile seemed wandering ever ; 

While in the depths of azure fire that gleamed 

Beneath the drooping lashes, slept a world 

Of eloqueut meaning, passionate yet pure — 

Dreamy — subdued — but oh, how beautiful ! 

A look of timid, pleading tenderness 

That should have been a talisman to charm 

His restless heart for aye. Rememberest tnou ? 

Mad. — {impatiently.) I do — I do remember — 'twas my own. 
He prized it as his life — I gave it him — 
What of it ! — speak ! 

Strang. — {showing a miniature,) Lady, behold that gift ! 

Mad — {clasping her hands) Merciful Heaven ! is my Rupert dead ? 

{After a pause, during which she seems overwhelmed with agony) 

How died he ? — when ? — oh, thou wast by his side 

In that last hour and / was far away ! 

My blessed love ! — give me that token ! — speak ! 

What message sent he to his Madelon ? 

Strang. — {Supporting her and strongly agitated,) 

He ia not dead, dear lady 1 — grieve not thus ! 



92 FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD. 

Mad. — He is not false, sir stranger ! 

Strang. For thy sake, 

Would he were worthier ! One other proof 
I'll give thee, loveliest ! if thou lov'st him still, 
I'll not believe thee woman. Listen, then ! 
A faithful lover breathes not of his bliss 
To other ears. Wilt hear a fable, lady ? 

Here the stranger details some incidents of the first wooing of 

Madelon by Rupert, and concludes with, 

Lady, my task is o'er — dost doubt me still ? 

Mad. Doubt thee, my Rupert ! ah, I know thee now. 
Fling by that hateful mask ! — let me unclasp it 1 
No ! thou wouldst not betray thy Madelon. 

The " Miscellaneous Poems" of the volume — many of them 
written in childhood — are, of course, various in character and me- 
rit. " The Dying Rosebud's Lament," although by no means 
one of the best, will very well serve to show the earlier and most 
characteristic manner of the poetess : 

Ah, me ! — ah wo is me 

That I should perish now, 
With the dear sunlight just let in 
Upon my balmy brow. 

My leaves, instinct with glowing life, 

Were quivering to unclose : 
My happy heart with love was rife — 

I was almost a rose. 

Nerved by a hope, warm, rich, intense, 

Already I had risen 
Above my cage's curving fence — 

My green and graceful prison. 

My pouting lips, by Zephyr pressed, 

Were just prepared to part, 
And whispered to the wooing wind 

The rapture of my heart. 

In new-born fancies revelling, 

My mossy cell half riven, 
Each thrilling leaflet seemed a wing 

To bear me into Heaven. 

How oft, while yet an infant-flower, 

My crimson cheek Ive laid 
Against the green bars of my bower, 

Impatient of the shade. 

And, pressing up and peeping through 

Its small but precious vistas, 
Sighed for the lovely light and dew 

That blessed my elder sisters. 



FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD. 93 



I saw the sweet breeze rippling o'er 

Their leaves that loved the play, 
Though the light thief stole all the store 

Of dew-drop gems away. 

I thought how happy I should be 

Such diamond wreaths to wear, 
And frolic with a rose's glee 

With sunbeam, bird and air. 

Ah, me ! — ah, wo is me, that I, 

Ere yet my leaves unclose, 
"With all my wealth of sweets must die 

Before I am a rose ! 

The poetical reader will agree with me that few things have 
ever been written (by any poet, at any age,) more delicately fan- 
ciful than the passages italicized — and yet they are the work of a 
girl not more than fourteen years of age. The clearness and force 
of expression, and the nice appositeness of the overt and insin- 
uated meaning, are, when we consider the youth of the writer, 
even more remarkable than the fancy. 

I cannot speak of Mrs. Osgood's poems without a strong pro- 
pensity to ring the changes upon the indefinite word " grace" and 
its derivatives. About everything she writes we perceive this in- 
describable charm — of which, perhaps, the elements are a vivid 
fancy and a quick sense of the proportionate. Grace, however, 
may be most satisfactorily defined as " a term applied, in despair, 
to that class of the impressions of Beauty which admit of no 
analysis." It is in this irresoluble effect that Mrs. Osgood excels 
any poetess of her country — and it is to this easily appreciable 
effect that her popularity is owing. Nor is she more graceful 
herself than a lover of the graceful, under whatever guise it is 
presented to her consideration. The sentiment renders itself man- 
ifest, in innumerable instances, as well throughout her prose as 
her poetry. Whatever be her theme, she at once extorts from it 
its whole essentiality of grace. Fanny Ellsler has been often 
lauded ; true poets have sung her praises ; but we look in vain 
for anything written about her, which so distinctly and vividly 
paints her to the eye as the half dozen quatrains which follow. 
They are to be found in the English volume : 

She comes 1 — the spirit of the dance ! 
And but for those large eloquent eyes, 



94 FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD. 

Where passion speaks in every glance, 
She'd seem a wanderer from the skies. 

So light that, gazing breathless there, 

Lest the celestial dream should go, 
You'd think the music in the air 

Waved the fair vision to and fro. 

Or think the melody's sweet flow 

Within the radiant creature played, 
And those soft wreathing arms of snow 
And white sylph feet the music made. 

Now gliding slow with dreamy grace, 

Her eyes beneath their lashes lost, 
Now motionless, with lifted face, 

And small hands on her bosom crossed. 

And now vnth flashing eyes she springs — 

Her whole bright figure raised in air, 
As if her soul had spread its wings 

And poised her one wild instant there ! 

She spoke not — but, so richly fraught 
With language are her glance and smile, 

That, when the curtain fell, I thought 
She had been talking all the while. 

This is, indeed, poetry — and of the most unquestionable kind 
— poetry truthful in the proper sense — that is to say, breathing 
of Nature. There is here nothing forced or artificial — no hardly 
sustained enthusiasm. The poetess speaks because she feels, and 
what she feels ; but then what she feels is felt only by the truly 
poetical. The thought in the last line of the quatrain will not 
be so fully appreciated by the reader as it should be ; for latterly 
it has been imitated, plagiarized, repeated ad infinitum : — but 
the other passages italicized have still left them all their original 
effect. The idea in the two last lines is exquisitely naive and na- 
tural ; that in the two last lines of the second quatrain, beautiful 
beyond measure ; that of the whole fifth quatrain, magnificent — 
unsurpassed in the entire compass of American poetry. It is in- 
stinct with the noblest poetical requisite — imagination. 

Of the same trait I find, to my surprise, one of the best exem- 
plifications among the " Juvenile Rhymes." 

For Fancy is a fairy that can hear, 
Ever, the melody of Nature's voice 
And see all lovely visions that she will. 
She drew a picture of a beauteous bird 
With plumes of radiant green and gold inwoven, 



l\ 



FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD. 95 

Banished from its beloved resting place, 
And fluttering in vain hope from tree to tree, 
And bade us think how, like it, the sweet season 
From one bright shelter to another fled — 
First from the maple waved her emerald pinions, 
But lingered still upon the oak and elm, 
Till, frightened by rude breezes even from them, 
With mournful sigh she moaned her sad farewell. 

The little poem called " The Music Box" has been as widely 

circulated as any of Mrs. Osgood's compositions. The melody 

and harmony of this jeu d 1 esprit are perfect, and there is in it a 

rich tint of that epigrammatism for which the poetess is noted. 

Some of the intentional epigrams interspersed through the works 

are peculiarly happy. Here is one which, while replete with the 

rarest " spirit of point," is yet something more than pointed. 

TO AN ATHEIST POET. 

Lovest thou the music of the sea ? 

Callest thou the sunshine bright ? 
His voice is more than melody — 

His smile is more than light. 

Here again, is something very similar : 

Fanny shuts her smiling eyes, 

Then because she cannot see, 
Thoughtless simpleton ! she cries 

" Ah ! you can't see me." 

Fanny's like the sinner vain 

Who, with spirit shut and dim, 
Thinks, because he sees not' Heaven, 

Heaven beholds not him. 

Is it not a little surprising, however, that a writer capable of so 

much precision and finish as the author of these epigrams must 

be, should have failed to see how much of force is lost in the 

inversion of " the sinner vain?" Why not have written "Fanny's 

like the silly sinner ?" — or, if " silly" be thought too jocose, " the 

blinded sinner ?" The rhythm, at the same time, would thus be 

much improved by bringing the lines, 

Fanny's like the silly sinner, 
Thinks because he sees not Heaven, 

into exact equality. 

In mingled epigrams and espieglerie Mrs. Osgood is even more 
especially at home. I have seldom seen anything in this way 
more happily done than the song entitled " If he can.'''' 

" The Unexpected Declaration" is, perhaps, even a finer speci- 



FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD. 



men of the same manner. It is one of that class of compositions 
which Mrs. Osgood has made almost exclusively her own. Had 
I seen it without her name, I should have had no hesitation in 
ascribing it to her ; for there is no other person— in America cer- 
tainly — who does anything of a similar kind with anything like 
a similar piquancy. 

The point of this poem, however, might have been sharpened, 
and the polish increased in lustre, by the application of the emory 
of brevity. From what the lover says much might well have 
been omitted ; and I should have preferred leaving out altogether 
the autorial comments ; for the story is fully told without them. 
The " Why do you weep?" " Why do you frown !" and "Why do 
you smile?" supply all the imagination requires; to supply more 
than it requires, oppresses and offends it. Nothing more deeply 
grieves it — or more vexes the true taste in general, than hyperism 
of any kind. In Germany, Wohlgeborn is a loftier title than 
Edelgehorn; and in Greece, the thrice- victorious at the Olympic 
games could claim a statue of the size of life, while he who had 
conquered but once was entitled only to a colossal one. 

The English collection of which I speak was entitled "A Wreath 
of Wild Flowers from New England." It met with a really cordial 
reception in Great Britain — was favorably noticed by the " Literary 
Gazette," "Times," "Atlas," "Monthly Chronicle," and especially 
by the "Court Journal," "The Court and Ladies' Magazine,'' 
" La Belle Assemblee," and other similar works. " We have long 
been familiar," says the high authority of the " Literary Gazette," 

" with the name of our fair author Our expectations have 

been fulfilled, and we have here a delightful gathering of the sweet- 
est of wild flowers, all looking as fresh and beautiful as if they had 
grown in the richest of English pasture in place of having been 
' nursed by the cataract.' True, the wreath might have been improv- 
ed with a little more care — a trifling attention or two paid to the 
formation of it. A stalk here and there that obtrudes itself between 
the bells of the flowers, might have become so interwoven as to 
have been concealed, and the whole have looked as if it had grown 
in that perfect and beautiful form. Though, after all, we are perhaps 
too chary ; for in Nature every leaf is not ironed out to a form, nor 
propped up with a wiry precision, but blown and ruffled by the 



FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD. 97 

refreshing breezes, and looking as careless and easy and unaffected 
as a child that bounds along with its silken locks tossed to and 
fro just as the wind uplifts thern. Page after page of this volume 
have we perused with a feeling of pleasure and admiration." The 
"Court Journal" more emphatically says: — "Her wreath is one 
of violets, sweet-scented, pure and modest ; so lovely that the hand 
that wove it should not neglect additionally to enrich it by turning 
her love and kindness to things of larger beauty. Some of the 
smaller lyrics in the volume are perfectly beautiful — beautiful in 
their chaste and exquisite simplicity and the perfect elegance of 
their composition." In fact, there was that about "The Wreath 
of Wild Flowers" — that inexpressible grace of thought and manner 
— which never fails to find ready echo in the hearts of the aristo- 
cracy and refinement of Great Britain ; — and it was here especially 
that Mrs. Osgood found welcome. Her husband's merits as an 
artist had already introduced her into distinguished society, (she 
was petted, in especial, by Mrs. Norton and Rogers,) but the 
publication of her poems had at once an evidently favorable effect 
upon his fortunes. His pictures were placed in a most advantage- 
ous light by her poetical and conversational ability. 

Messrs. Clarke and Austin, of New York, have lately issued 
another, but still a very uncomplete collection of " Poems by Frances 
S. Osgood." In general, it includes by no means the best of 
her works. "The Daughter of Herodias" — one of her longest 
compositions, and a very noble poem, putting me in mind of the 
best efforts of Mrs. Hemans — is omitted : — it is included, however, 
in the last edition of Doctor Griswold's " Poets and Poetry of 
America." In Mrs. C. and A.'s collection there occur, too, very 
many of those half sentimental, half allegorical compositions of 
which, at one period, the authoress seemed to be particularly fond — 
for the reason, perhaps, that they afforded her good oppor- 
tunity for the exercise of her ingenuity and epigrammatic talent : — 
no poet, however, can admit them to be poetry at all. Still, the 
volume contains some pieces which enable us to take a new view 
of the powers of the writer. A few additional years, with their 
inevitable sorrow, appear to have stirred the depths of her heart. 
We see less of frivolity — less of vivacity — more of tenderness — 
earnestness — even passion — and far more of the true imagination 
Vol. III.— 5 



98 FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD. 

as distinguished from its subordinate, fancy. The one prevalent 
trait, grace, alone distinctly remains. " The Spirit of Poetry," 
"To Sybil," " The Birth of the Callitriche," and u The Child and 
its Angel-Playmate," would do honor to any of our poets. " She 
Loves Him Yet," nevertheless, will serve, better than either of 
these poems, to show the alteration of manner referred to. It is 
not only rythmically perfect, but it evinces much originality in its 
structure. The verses commencing, " Yes, lower to the level," 
are in a somewhat similar tone, but are more noticeable for their 
terse energy of expression. 

In not presenting to the public at one view all that she has 
written in verse, Mrs. Osgood has incurred the risk of losing that 
credit to which she is entitled on the score of versatility — of va- 
riety in invention and expression. There is scarcely a form of 
poetical composition in which she has not made experiment ; and 
there is none in which she has not very happily succeeded. Her 
defects are chiefly negative and by no means numerous. Her 
versification is sometimes exceedingly good, but more frequently 
feeble through the use of harsh consonants, and such words as 
" thou'dst" for "thou wouldst^ with other unnecessary contrac- 
tions, inversions, and obsolete expressions. Her imagery is often 
mixed ; — indeed it is rarely otherwise. The epigrammatism of 
her conclusions gives to her poems, as wholes, the air of being 
more skilfully constructed than they really are. On the other 
hand, we look in vain throughout her works for an offence against 
the finer taste, or against decorum — for a low thought or a plati- 
tude. A happy refinement — an instinct of the pure and delicate 
— is one of her most noticeable excellencies. She may be properly 
commended, too, for originality of poetic invention, whether in 
the conception of a theme or in the manner of treating it. Con- 
sequences of this trait are her point and piquancy. Fancy and 
naivete appear in all she writes. Regarding the loftier merits, I 
am forced to speak of her in more measured terms. She has 
occasional passages of true imagination — but scarcely the glowing, 
vigorous, and sustained ideality of Mrs. Maria Brooks — or even, 
in general, the less ethereal elevation of Mrs. Welby. In that in- 
describable something, however, which, for want of a more defi- 
nite term, we are accustomed to call " grace " — that charm so 



LYDIA M. CHILD. 99 

magical, because at once so shadow}' and so potent — that Will o' 
the Wisp which, in its supreme development, may be said to in- 
volve nearly all that is valuable in poetry — she has, unquestion- 
ably, no rival among her countrywomen. 

Of pure prose — of prose proper — she has, perhaps, never writ- 
ten a line in her life. Her usual magazine papers are a class by 
themselves. She begins with a resolute effort at being sedate — 
that is to say, sufficiently prosaic and matter-of-fact for the pur- 
pose of a legend or an essay ; but, after a few sentences, we be- 
hold uprising the leaven of the Muse ; then, with a flourish and 
some vain attempts at repression, a scrap of verse renders itself 
manifest ; then comes a little poem outright ; then another and 
another and another, with impertinent patches of prose in be- 
tween — until at length the mask is thrown fairly off and far away, 
and the whole article — sings. 

Upon the whole, I have spoken of Mrs. Osgood so much in de- 1 
tail, less on account of what she has actually done than on account 
of what I perceive in her the ability to do. 

In character she is ardent, sensitive, impulsive — the very soul 
of truth and honor ; a worshipper of the beautiful, with a heart 
so radically artless as to seem abundant in art ; universally ad- 
mired, respected, and beloved. In person, she is about the me- 
dium height, slender even to fragility, graceful whether in action 
or repose ; complexion usually pale ; hair black and glossy ; eyes 
a clear, luminous grey, large, and with singular capacity for ex- 
pression. 



LYDIA M. CHILD. 

Mrs. Child has acquired a just celebrity by many compositions 
of high merit, the most noticeable of which are "Hobomok," 
" Philothea," and a " History of the Condition of Women." 
" Philothea," in especial, is written with great vigor, and, as a 
classical romance, is not far inferior to the " Anacharsis " of Bar- 
thelemi; — its style is a model for purity, chastity, and ease. 
Some of her magazine papers are distinguished for graceful and 
brilliant imagination — a quality rarely noticed in our country- 



100 LYDIA M. CHILD. 



women. She continues to write a great deal for the monthlies 
and other journals, and invariably writes well. Poetry she has 
not often attempted, but I make no doubt that in this she would 
excel. It seems, indeed, the legitimate province of her fervid and 
fanciful nature. I quote one of her shorter compositions, as well 
to instance (from the subject) her intense appreciation of genius 
in others as to exemplify the force of her poetic expression : — 

MARIUS AMID THE RUINS OF CARTHAGE. 

Pillars are fallen at thy feet, 

Fanes quiver in the air, 
A prostrate city is thy seat, 

And thou alone art there 

No change comes o'er thy noble brow, 

Though ruin is around thee ; 
Thine eyebeam burns as proudly now 

As when the laurel crowned thee. 

It cannot bend thy lofty soul 

Though friends and fame depart — 
The car of Fate may o'er thee roll 

Nor crush thy Roman heart. 

And genius hath electric power 

Which earth can never tame ; 
Bright suns may scorch and dark clouds lower, 

Its flash is still the same. 

The dreams we loved in early life 

May melt like mist away ; 
High thoughts may seem, 'mid passion's strife, 

Like Carthage in decay ; 

And proud hopes in the human heart 

May be to ruin hurled, 
Like mouldering monuments of art 

Heaped on a sleeping world ; 

Yet there is something will not die 

Where life hath once been fair ; 
Some towering thoughts still rear on high, 

Some Roman lingers there. 

Mrs. Child, casually observed, has nothing particularly striking 
in her personal appearance. One would pass her in the street a 
dozen times without notice. She is low in stature and slightly 
framed. Her complexion is florid ; eyes and hair are dark ; fea- 
tures in general diminutive. The expression of her countenance, 
when animated, is highly intellectual. Her dress is usually plain, 
not even neat — anything but fashionable. Her bearing needs ex- 



THOMAS DUNN BROWN. 101 

citement to impress it with life and dignity. She is of that order 
of beings who are themselves only on " great occasions." Her 
husband is still living. She has no children. I need scarcely add 
that she has always been distinguished for her energetic and active 
philanthropy. 



THOMAS DUNN BROWN. 

I have seen one or two scraps of verse with this gentleman's 
nom de plume* appended, which had considerable merit. For 
example : 

A sound melodious shook the breeze 

When thy beloved name was heard : 

Such was the music in the word 

Its dainty rhythm the pulses stirred 
But passed forever joys like these. 

There is no joy, no light, no day ; 

But black despair and night al-way 
And thickening gloom : 
And this, Azthene, is my doom. 

Was it for this, for weary years, 

I strove among the sons of men, 

And by the magic of my pen — 

Just sorcery — walked the lion's den 
Of sbinder void of tears and fears — 

And all for thee ? For thee ! — alas, 

As is the image on a glass 
So baseless seems, 
Azthene, all my early dreams. 

I must confess, however, that I do not appreciate the " dainty 
rhythm" of such a word as " Azthene," and, perhaps, there is 
some taint of egotism in the passage about " the magic" of Mr. 
Brown's pen. Let us be charitable, however, and set all this 
down under the head of the pure imagination or invention — ■ 
the first of poetical requisites. The inexcusable sin of Mr. Brown 
is imitation — if this be not too mild a term. When Barry Corn- 
wall, for example, sings about a u dainty rhythm," Mr. Brown forth- 
with, in B flat, hoots about it too. He has taken, however, his 
most unwarrantable liberties in the way of plagiarism, with Mr. 

* Thomas Dunn English. 



102 THOMAS DUNN BROWN. 



Henry B. Hirst, of Philadelphia — a poet whose merits have not 
yet been properly estimated. 

I place Mr. Brown, to be sure, on my list of literary people not 
on account of his poetry, (which I presume he himself is not 
weak enough to estimate very highly,) but on the score of his 
having edited, for several months, " with the aid of numerous 
collaborators," a magazine called "The Aristidean." This work, 
although professedly a " monthly," was issued at irregular inter- 
vals, and was unfortunate, I fear, in not attaining at any period 
more than about fifty subscribers. 

Mr. Brown has at least that amount of talent which would ena- 
ble him to succeed in his father's profession — that of a ferryman 
on the Schuylkill — but the fate of " The Aristidean" should indi- 
cate to him that, to prosper in any higher walk of life, he must 
apply himself to study. No spectacle can be more ludicrous than 
that of a man without the commonest school education, busying 
himself in attempts to instruct mankind on topics of polite litera- 
ture. The absurdity, in such cases, does not lie merely in the ig- 
norance displayed by the would-be instructor, but in the transpa- 
rency of the shifts by which he endeavors to keep this ignorance 
concealed. The " editor of the Aristidean," for example, was not 
the public laughing-stock throughout the five months of his mag- 
azine's existence, so much on account of writing " lay" for " lie," 
" went" for " gone," " set" for " sit," etc. etc., or for coupling 
nouns in the plural with verbs in the singular — as when he 
writes, above, 

so baseless seems, 

Azthene, all my earthly dreams — 

he was not, I say, laughed at so much on account of his excusable de- 
ficiencies in English grammar (although an editor should undoubt- 
edly be able to write his own name) as on account of the pertinacity 
with which he exposed his weakness, in lamenting the " typograph- 
ical blunders" which so unluckily tvould creep into his work. He 
should have reflected that there is not in all America a proof-read- 
er so blind as to permit such errors to escape him. The rhyme, 
for instance, in the matter of the " dreams" that u seems," would 
have distinctly shown even the most uneducated printers' devil 



THOMAS DUNN BROWN. 103 

that he, the devil, had no right to meddle with so obviously an 
intentional peculiarity. 

Were I writing merely for American readers, I should not, of 
course, have introduced Mr. Brown's name in this book. With us, 
grotesqueries such as u The Aristidean" and its editor, are, not 
altogether unparalleled, and are sufficiently well understood — but 
my purpose is to convey to foreigners some idea of a condition of 
literary affairs among us, which otherwise they might find it dif- 
ficult to comprehend or to conceive. That Mr. Brown's blunders 
are really such as I have described them — that I have not dis- 
torted their character or exaggerated their grossness in any re- 
spect — that there existed in New York, for some months, as con- 
ductor of a magazine that called itself the organ of the Tyler party, 
and was even mentioned, at times, by respectable papers, a man 
who obviously never went to school, and was so profoundly igno- 
rant as not to know that he could not spell — are serious and pos- 
itive facts — uncolored in the slightest degree — demonstrable, in a 
word, upon the spot, by reference to almost any editorial sentence 
upon any page of the magazine in question. But a single in- 
stance will suffice : — Mr. Hirst, in one of his poems, has the lines, 

Oh Odin ! 'twas pleasure — 'twas passion to see 
Her serfs sweep like wolves on a lambkin like me. 

At page 200 of "The Aristidean" for September, 1845, Mr. 
Brown, commenting on the English of the passage, says : — " This 
lambkin might have used better language than ' like me — unless 
he intended it for a specimen of choice Choctaw, when it may, for 
all we know to the contrary, pass muster." It is needless, I pre- 
sume, to proceed farther in a search for the most direct proof possi- 
ble or conceivable, of the ignorance of Mr. Brown — who, in simi- 
lar cases, invariably writes — " like I." 

In an editorial announcement on page 242 of the same " num- 
ber," he says : — " This and the three succeeding numbers brings 
the work up to January and with the two numbers previously 
published makes up a volume or half year of numbers.' 1 '' But 
enough of this absurdity : — Mr. Brown had, for the motto on his 
magazine cover, the words of Richelieu, 



Men call me. cruel: 



I am not : — I am just. 



104 ELIZABETH BOGART. 

Here the two monosyllables " an ass" should have been ap- 
pended. They were no doubt omitted through "one of those 

d d typographical blunders" which, through life, have been 

at once the bane and the antidote of Mr. Brown. 

I make these remarks in no spirit of unkindness. Mr. B. is yet 
young — certainly not more than thirty-eight or nine — and might 
readily improve himself at points where he is most defective. No 
one of any generosity would think the worse of him for getting 
private instruction. 

I do not personally know him. About his appearance there is 
nothing very remarkable — except that he exists in a perpetual 
state of vacillation between mustachio and goatee. In character, 
a windbeutel. 



ELIZABETH BOGART. 

Miss Bogart has been for many years before the public as a 
writer of poems and tales (principally the former) for the period- 
icals, having made her debut as a contributor to the original "New 
York Mirror." Doctor Griswold, in a foot-note appended to one 
of her poems quoted in his " Poets and Poetry," speaks of the 
" volume " from which he quotes ; but Miss Bogart has not yet 
collected her writings in volume form. Her fugitive pieces have 
usually been signed " Estelle." They are. noticeable for nerve, 
dignity and finish. Perhaps the four stanzas entitled " He came 
too Late," and introduced into Dr. Griswold's volume are 
the most favorable specimen of her manner. Had he not quoted 
them I should have copied them here. 

Miss Bogart is a member of one of the oldest families in the 
State. An interesting sketch of her progenitors is to be found in 
Thompson's " History of Long Island." She is about the medium 
height, straight and slender ; black hair and eyes ; countenance 
full of vivacity and intelligence. She converses with fluency and 
spirit, enunciates distinctly, and exhibits interest in whatever is 
addressed to her — a rare quality in good talkers ; has a keen ap- 
preciation of genius and of natural scenery ; is cheerful and fond 
of society. 



CATHERINE M. SEDGWICK. 105 



CATHERINE If. SEDGWICK. 

Miss Sedgwick is not only one of our most celebrated and 
most meritorious writers, but attained reputation at a period when 
American reputation in letters was regarded as a phenomenon ; 
and thus, like Irving, Cooper, Paulding, Bryant, Halleck, and one 
or two others, she is indebted, certainly, for some portion of the 
esteem in which she was and is held, to that patriotic pride and 
gratitude to which I have already alluded, and for which we must 
make reasonable allowance in estimating the absolute merit of 
our literary pioneers. 

Her earliest published work of any length was " A New Eng- 
land Tale," designed in the first place as a religious tract, but ex- 
panding itself into a volume of considerable size. Its success — 
partially owing, perhaps, to the influence of the parties for whom 
or at whose instigation it was written — encouraged the author to 
attempt a novel of somewhat greater elaborateness as well as 
length, and " Redwood " was soon announced, establishing her at 
once as the first female prose writer of her country. It was re- 
printed in England, and translated, I believe, into French and 
Italian. " Hope Leslie " next appeared — also a novel — and was 
more favorably received even than its predecessors. Afterwards 
came " Clarence," not quite so successful, and then " The Lin- 
woods," which took rank in the public esteem with " Hope Leslie." 
These are all of her longer prose fictions, but she has written nu- 
merous shorter ones of great merit — such as "The Rich Poor 
Man and the Poor Rich Man," " Live and let Live," (both in vol- 
ume form,) with various articles for the magazines and annuals, 
to which she is still an industrious contributor. About ten years 
since she published a compilation of several of her fugitive prose 
pieces, under the title " Tales and Sketches," and a short time 
ago a series of " Letters from Abroad " — not the least popular or 
least meritorious of her compositions. 

Miss Sedgwick has now and then been nicknamed " the Miss 
Edge worth of America ;" but she has done nothing to bring down 
upon her the " vengeance of so equivocal a title. That she has 

5* 



106 CATHERINE M. SEDGWICK 

thoroughly studied and profoundly admired Miss Edgeworth may, 
indeed, be gleaned from her works — but what woman has not ? 
Of imitation there is not the slightest perceptible taint. In both 
authors we observe the same tone of thoughtful morality, but 
here all resemblance ceases. In the Englishwomen there is far 
more of a certain Scotch prudence, in the American more of 
warmth, tenderness, sympathy for the weaknesses of her sex. 
Miss Edgeworth is the more acute, the more inventive, and the 
more rigid. Miss Sedgwick is the more womanly. 

All her stories are full of interest. The " New England Tale " 
and " Hope Leslie " are especially so, but upon the whole I am 
best pleased with " The Linwoods." Its prevailing features are 
ease, purity of style, pathos, and verisimilitude. To plot it has 
little pretension. The scene is in America, and, as the sub-title 
indicates, " Sixty years since." This, by-the-by, is taken from 
" Waverley." The adventures of the family of a Mr. Linvvood, a 
resident of New York, form the principal theme. The character 
of this gentleman is happily drawn, although there is an antago- 
nism between the initial and concluding touches — the end has 
forgotten the beginning, like the government of Trinculo, Mr. 
L. has two children, Herbert and Isabella. Being himself a Tory, 
the boyish impulses of his son in favor of the revolutionists are 
watched with anxiety and vexation ; and on the breaking out of 
the war, Herbert, positively refusing to drink the king's health, is 
expelled from home by his father — an event on which hinges the 
main interest of the narrative. Isabella is the heroine proper, full 
of generous impulses, beautiful, intellectual, spirituelle — indeed, 
a most fascinating creature. But the family of a Widow Lee 
throws quite a charm over all the book — a matronly, pious and 
devoted mother, yielding up her son to the cause of her country 
— the son gallant, chivalrous, yet thoughtful ; a daughter, gentle, 
loving, melancholy, and susceptible of light impressions. This 
daughter, Bessie Lee, is one of the most effective personations to 
be found in our fictitious literature, and may lay claims to the 
distinction of originality — no slight distinction where character 
is concerned. It is the old story, to be sure, of a meek and trust- 
ing heart broken by treachery and abandonment, but in the nar- 
ration of Miss Sedgwick it breaks upon us with all the freshness 



CATHERINE M. SEDGWICK. 107 

of novel emotion. Deserted by her lover, an accomplished and 
aristocratical coxcomb, the spirits of the gentle girl sink gradually 
from trust to simple hope, from hope to anxiety, from anxiety to 
doubt, from doubt to melancholy, and from melancholy to mad- 
ness. The gradation is depicted in a masterly manner. She es- 
capes from her home in New England and endeavors to make her 
way alone to New York, with the object of restoring to him who 
had abandoned her, some tokens he had given her of his love — 
an act which her disordered fancy assures her will effect in her 
own person a disenthralment from passion. Her piety, her mad- 
ness, and her beauty, stand her in stead of the lion of Una, and 
she reaches the city in safety. In that portion of the narrative 
which embodies this journey are some passages which no mind 
unimbued with the purest spirit of poetry could have conceived, 
and they have often made me wonder why Miss Sedgwick has 
never written a poem. 

I have already alluded to her usual excellence of style ; but 
she has a very peculiar fault — that of discrepancy between the 
words and character of the speaker — the fault, indeed, more pro- 
perly belongs to the depicting of character itself. 

For example, at page 38, vol. 1, of " The Linwoods:" — 

" No more of my contempt for the Yankees, Hal, an' thou lovest me," re- 
plied Jasper. "You remember JEsop's advice to Croesus at the Persian 
court ?" 

" No, I am sure I do not. You have the most provoking way of resting 
the lever by which you bring out your own knowledge, on your friend's 
ignorance." 

Now all this is pointed, (although the last sentence would have 
been improved by letting the words " on your friend's ignorance" 
come immediately after " resting,") but it is by no means the lan- 
guage of schoolboys — and such are the speakers. 

Again, at page 226, vol. 1, of the same novel: — - 

" Now, out on you, you lazy, slavish loons !" cried Rose. " Cannot you see 
these men are raised up to fight for freedom for more than themselves ? If 
the chain be broken at one end, the links will fall apart sooner or later. When 
you see the sun on the mountain top, you may be sure it will shine into the 
deepest valleys before long." 

Who would suppose this graceful eloquence to proceed from 
the mouth of a negro woman ? Yet such is Rose. 



108 CATHERINE M. SEDGWICK 

Again, at page 24, vol. 1, same novel : — 

" True, I never saw her ; but I tell you, young lad, that there is such a 
thing as seeing the shadow of things far distant and past, and never seeing 
the realities, though they it be that cast the shadows." 

Here the speaker is an old woman who, a few sentences before, 
has been boasting of her proficiency in " tellirC fortius '." 

I might object, too, very decidedly to the vulgarity of such a 
phrase as " I put in my oar," (meaning, " I joined in the conver- 
sation,") when proceeding from the mouth of so well-bred a per- 
sonage as Miss Isabella Linwood. These are, certainly, most 
remarkable inadvertences. 

As the author of many books — of several absolutely bound 
volumes in the ordinary " novel" form of auld lang syne, Miss Sedg- 
wick has a certain adventitious hold upon the attention of the pub- 
lic, a species of tenure that has nothing to do with literature proper 
— a very decided advantage, in short, over her more modern rivals 
whom fashion and the growing influence of the want of an inter- 
national copyright law have condemned to the external insignifi- 
cance of the yellow-backed pamphleteering. 

We must permit, however, neither this advantage nor the more 
obvious one of her having been one of our pioneers, to bias the 
critical judgment as it makes estimate of her abilities in compari- 
son with those of her present cotemporaries. She has neither the 
vigor of Mrs. Stephens nor the vivacious grace of Miss Chubbuck, 
nor the pure style of Mrs. Embury, nor the classic imagination of 
Mrs. Child, nor the naturalness of Mrs. Annan, nor the thoughtful 
and suggestive originality of Miss Fuller ; but in many of the qual- 
ities mentioned she excels, and in no one of them is she particu- 
larly deficient. She is an author of marked talent, but by no 
means of such decided genius as would entitle her to that prece- 
dence among our female writers which, under the circumstances to 
which I have alluded, seems to be yielded her by the voice of the 
public. 

Strictly speaking, Miss Sedgwick is not one of the literati of 
New York city, but she passes here about half or rather more than 
half her time. Her home is Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Her 
family is one of the first in America. Her father, Theodore Sedg- 
wick the elder, was an eminent jurist and descended from one of 



LEWIS GAYLORD CLARK. 109 

Cromwell's major-generals. Many of her relatives have distin- 
guished themselves in various ways. 

She is about the medium height, perhaps a little below it. Her 
forehead is an unusually fine one ; nose of a slightly Roman curve; 
eyes dark and piercing ; mouth well formed and remarkably plea- 
sant in its expression. The portrait in " Graham's Magazine" is 
by no means a likeness, and, although the hair is represented as 
curled, (Miss Sedgwick at present wears a cap — at least most 
usually,) gives her the air of being much older than she is. 

Her manners are those of a high-bred woman, but her ordinary 
manner vacillates, in a singular way, between cordiality and a 
reserve amounting: to hauteur. 



LEWIS GAYLORD CLARK. 

Mr. Clark is known principally as the twin brother of the late 
Willis Gaylord Clark, the poet, of Philadelphia, with whom he 
has often been confounded from similarity both of person and of 
name. He is known, also, within a more limited circle, as one of 
the editors of " The Knickerbocker Magazine," and it is in this la> 
ter capacity that I must be considered as placing him among lite- 
rary people. He writes little himself, the editorial scraps which 
usually appear in fine type at the end of " The Knickerbocker" 
being the joint composition of a great variety of gentlemen (most 
of them possessing shrewdness and talent,) connected with diverse 
journals about the city of New York. It is only in some such 
manner, as might be supposed, that so amusing and so heteroge- 
neous a medley of chit-chat could be put together. Were a little 
more pains taken in elevating the tone of this " Editors' Table," 
(which its best friends are forced to admit is at present a little 
Boweryish,) I should have no hesitation in commending it in 
general as a very creditable and very entertaining specimen of 
what may be termed easy writing and hard reading. 

It is not, of course, to be understood from anything I have 
here said, that Mr. Clark does not occasionally contribute edito- 
rial matter to the magazine. His compositions, however, are far 
from numerous, and are always to be distinguished by their style, 



110 LEWIS GAYLORD CLARK 

which is more " easily to be imagined than described." It has its 
merit, beyond doubt, but I shall not undertake to say that either 
"vigor," "force" or " impressiveness" is the precise term by which 
that merit should be designated. Mr. Clark once did me the 
honor to review my poems, and 1 forgive him. 

" The Knickerbocker" has been long established, and seems to 
have in it some important elements of success. Its title, for a 
merely local one, is unquestionably good. Its contributors have 
usually been men of eminence. Washington Irving was at one 
period regularly engaged. Paulding, Bryant, Neal, and several 
others of nearly equal note have also at various times furnished 
articles, although none of these gentlemen, I believe, continue 
their communications. In general, the contributed matter has 
been praiseworthy ; the printing, paper, and so forth, have been 
excellent, and there certainly has been no lack of exertion in the 
way of what is termed "putting the work before the eye of the 
public ;" still some incomprehensible incubus has seemed always 
to sit heavily upon it, and it has never succeeded in attaining 
position among intelligent or educated readers. On account of 
the manner in which it is necessarily edited, the work is deficient 
in that absolutely indispensable element, individuality. As the 
editor has no precise character, the magazine, as a matter of 
course, can have none. When I say " no precise character," I 
mean that Mr. C, as a literary man, has about him no determi- 
nateness, no distinctiveness, no saliency of point ;— - an apple, in 
fact, or a pumpkin, has more angles. He is as smooth as oil or a 
sermon from Doctor Hawks ; he is noticeable for nothing in the 
world except for the markedness by which he is noticeable for 
nothing. 

What is the precise circulation of " The Knickerbocker'' at pre- 
sent I am unable to say; it has been variously stated at from 
eight to eighteen hundred subscribers. The former estimate is 
no doubt too low, and the latter, I presume, is far too high. 
There are, perhaps, some fifteen hundred copies printed. 

At the period of his brother's decease, Mr. Lewis G. Clark bore 
to him a striking resemblance, but within the last year or two 
there has been much alteration in the person of the editor of the 
" Knickerbocker." He is now, perhaps, forty-two or three, but 



ANNE C. LYNCH. m 



still good-looking. His forehead is, phrenologically, bad — round 
and what is termed " bullety." The mouth, however, is much 
better, although the smile is too constant and lacks expression ; 
the teeth are white and regular. His hair and whiskers are dark, 
the latter meeting voluminously beneath the chin. In height Mr. 
C. is about five feet ten or eleven, and in the street might be re- 
garded as quite a " personable man ;" in society I have never had 
the pleasure of meeting him. He is married, I believe. 



ANNE C. LYNCH. 

Miss Anne Charlotte Lynch has written little ; — her compo- 
sitions are even too few to be collected in volume form. Her 
prose has been, for the most part, anonymous — critical papers in 
" The New York Mirror" and elsewhere, with unacknowledged 
contributions to the annuals, especially " The Gift," and " The 
Diadem," both of Philadelphia. Her " Diary of a Recluse," pub- 
lished in the former work, is, perhaps, the best specimen of her 
prose manner and ability. I remember, also, a fair critique on 
Fanny Kemble's poems ; — this appeared in " The Democratic 
Review." 

In poetry, however, she has done better, and given evidence of 
at least unusual talent. Some of her compositions in this way 
are of merit, and one or two of excellence. In the former class I 
place her " Bones in the Desert," published in " The Opal" for 
1846, her " Farewell to Ole Bull," first printed in " The Tribune," 
and one or two of her sonnets — not forgetting some graceful and 
touching lines on the death of Mrs. Willis. In the latter class I 
place two noble poems, " The Ideal" and " The Ideal Found." 
These should be considered as one, for each is by itself imperfect. 
In modulation and vigor of rhythm, in dignity and elevation of 
sentiment, in metaphorical appositeness and accuracy, and in 
energy of expression, I really do not know where to point out any- 
thing American much superior to them. Their ideality is not so 
manifest as their passion, but I think it an unusual indication of 
taste in Miss Lynch, or (more strictly) of an intuitive sense of 
poetry's true nature, that this passion is just sufficiently subdued 



112 CHARLES FENNO HOFFMAK 

to lie within the compass of the poetic art, within the limits of the 
beautiful. A step farther and it might have passed them. Mere 
passion, however exciting, prosaically excites ; it is in its very- 
essence homely, and -delights in homeliness : but the triumph 
over passion, as so finely depicted in the two poems mentioned, is 
one of the purest and most idealizing manifestations of moral 
beauty. 

In character Miss Lynch is enthusiastic, chivalric, self-sacrificing, 
" equal to any fate," capable of even martyrdom in whatever 
should seem to her a holy cause — a most exemplary daughter. 
She has her hobbies, however, (of which a very indefinite idea of 
" duty" is one,) and is, of course, readily imposed upon by any art- 
ful person who perceives and takes advantage of this most amia- 
ble failing. 

In person she is rather above the usual height, somewhat slen- 
der, with dark hair and eyes — the whole countenance at times full 
of intelligent expression. Her demeanor is dignified, graceful, and 
noticeable for repose. She goes much into literary society. 



CHARLES FENNO HOFFMAN. 

Mr. Charles Fenno Hoffman has been long known to the 
public as an author. He commenced his literary career (as is 
usually the case in America) by writing for the newspapers — for 
" The New York American" especially, in the editorial conduct of 
which he became in some manner associated, at a very early age, 
with Mr. Charles King. His first book, I believe, was a collection 
(entitled " A Winter in the West") of letters published in " The 
American" during a tour made by their author through the " far 
West." This work appeared in 1834, went through several 
editions, was reprinted in London, was very popular, and deserved 
its popularity. It conveys the natural enthusiasm of a true 
idealist, in the proper phrenological sense, of one sensitively alive 
to beauty in every development. Its scenic descriptions are vivid, 
because fresh, genuine, unforced. There is nothing of the cant of 
the tourist for the sake not of nature but of tourism. The author 
writes what he feels, and, clearly, because he feels it. The style, 



i\ 



CHARLES FENNO HOFFMAN. 113 

as well as that of all Mr. Hoffman's books, is easy, free from 
superfluities, and, although abundant in broad phrases, still singu- 
larly refined, gentlemanly. This ability to speak boldly without 
blackguardism, to use the tools of the rabble when necessary with- 
out soiling or roughening the hands with their employment, is a 
rare and unerring test of the natural in contradistinction from the 
artificial aristocrat. 

Mr. H.'s next work was " Wild Scenes in the Forest and Prai- 
rie," very similar to the preceding, but more diversified with 
anecdote and interspersed with poetry. " Greyslaer" followed, a 
romance based on the well known murder of Sharp, the Solicitor- 
General of Kentucky, by Beauchampe. W. Gilmore Simms, (who 
has far more power, more passion, more movement, more skill 
than Mr. Hoffman) has treated the same subject more effectively 
in his novel " Beauchampe ;" but the fact is that both gentlemen 
have positively failed, as might have been expected. That both 
books are interesting is no merit either of Mr. H. or of Mr. S. 
The real events were more impressive than are the fictitious ones. 
The facts of this remarkable tragedy, as arranged by actual cir- 
cumstance, would put to shame the skill of the most consummate 
artist. Nothing was left to the novelist but the amplification of 
character, and at this point neither the author of " Greyslaer" 
nor of " Beauchampe" is especially aufait. The incidents might 
be better woven into a tragedy. 

In the way of poetry, Mr. Hoffman has also written a good 
deal. " The Vigil of Faith and other Poems" is the title of a 
volume published several years ago. The subject of the leading 
poem is happy — whether originally conceived by Mr. H. or based 
on an actual superstition, I cannot say. Two Indian chiefs are 
rivals in love. The accepted lover is about to be made happy, 
when his betrothed is murdered by the discarded suitor. The 
revenge taken is the careful preservation of the life of the assassin, 
under the idea that the meeting the maiden in another world is 
the point most desired by both the survivors. The incidents in- 
terwoven are picturesque, and there are many quotable passages ; 
the descriptive portions are particularly good ; but the author 
has erred, first, in narrating the story in the first person, and 
secondly, in putting into the mouth of the narrator language and 



114 CHARLES FENNO HOFFMAN. 

sentiments above the nature of an Indian. I say that the narra- 
tion should not have been in the first person, because, although 
an Indian may and does fully experience a thousand delicate 
shades of sentiment, (the whole idea of the story is essentially 
sentimental,) still he has, clearly, no capacity for their various ex- 
pression. Mr. Hoffman's hero is made to discourse very much 
after the manner of Rousseau. Nevertheless, " The Vigil of 
Faith" is, upon the whole, one of our most meritorious poems. 
The shorter pieces in the collection have been more popular ; one 
or two of the songs particularly so — " Sparkling and Bright," for 
example, which is admirably adapted to song purposes, and is full 
of lyric feelings. It cannot be denied, however, that, in general, 
the whole tone, air and spirit of Mr. Hoffman's fugitive composi- 
tions are echoes of Moore. At times the very words and figures 
of the " British Anacreon" are unconsciously adopted. Neither 
can there be any doubt that this obvious similarity, if not positive 
imitation, is the source of the commendation bestowed upon our 
poet by " The Dublin University Magazine," which declares him 
" the best song writer in America," and does him also the honor 
to intimate its opinion that " he is a better fellow than the whole 
Yankee crew" of us taken together — after which there is very 
little to be said. 

Whatever may be the merits of Mr. Hoffman as a poet, it may 
be easily seen that these merits have been put in the worst possi- 
ble light by the indiscriminate and lavish approbation bestowed 
on them by Dr. Griswold in his " Poets and Poetry of America." 
The editor can find no blemish in Mr. H., agrees with every- 
thing and copies everything said in his praise — worse than all, 
gives him more space in the book than any two, or perhaps three, 
of our poets combined. All this is as much an insult to Mr. 
Hoffman as to the public, and has done the former irreparable 
injury — how or why, it is of course unnecessary to say. " Heaven 
save us from our friends !" 

Mr. Hoffman was the original editor of " The Knickerbocker 
Magazine," and gave it while under his control a tone and cha- 
racter, the weight of which may be best estimated by the con- 
sideration that the work thence received, an impetus which has 
sufficed to bear it on alive, although tottering, month after month, 



CHARLES FENNO HOFFMAN. 115 

through even that dense region of unmitigated and immitigable 
fog — that dreary realm of outer darkness, of utter and inconceiva- 
ble dunderheadism, over which has so long ruled King Log the 
Second, in the august person of one Lewis Gaylord Clark. Mr. 
Hoffman subsequently owned and edited " The American Monthly 
Magazine," one of the best journals we have ever had. He also 
for one year conducted " The New York Mirror," and has always 
■been a very constant contributor to the periodicals of the day. 

He is the brother of Ogden Hoffman. Their father, whose 
family came to New York from Holland before the time of Peter 
Stuyvesant, was often brought into connexion or rivalry with 
such men as Pinckney, Hamilton and Burr. 

The character of no man is more universally esteemed and ad- 
mired than that of the subject of this memoir. He has a host of 
friends, and it is quite impossible that he should have an enemy 
in the world. He is chivalric to a fault, enthusiastic, frank with- 
out discourtesy, an ardent admirer of the beautiful, a gentleman 
of the best school — a gentleman by birth, by education and by 
instinct. His manners are graceful and winning in the extreme — 
quiei, affable and dignified, yet cordial and degages. He con- 
verses much, earnestly, accurately and well. In person he is remark- 
ably handsome. He is about five feet ten in height, somewhat 
stoutly made. His countenance is a noble one — a full index of 
the character. The features are somewhat massive but reo-ular. 
The eyes are blue, or light gray, and full of fire ; the mouth finely 
formed, although the lips have a slight expression of voluptuous- 
ness ; the forehead, to my surprise although high, gives no indi- 
cation, in the region of the temples, of that ideality (or love of 
the beautiful) which is the distinguishing trait of his moral na- 
ture. The hair curls, and is of a dark brown, interspersed with 
gray. He wears full whiskers. Is about forty years of age. Un- 
married. 



116 MARY E. HEWITT. 



MARY E. HEWITT. 

I am not aware that Mrs. Hewitt has written any prose ; but 
her poems have been many, and occasionally excellent. A col- 
lection of them was published, in an exquisitely tasteful form, by 
Ticknor & Co., of Boston. The leading piece, entitled " Songs 
of our Land," although the longest, was by no means the most 
meritorious. In general, these compositions evince poetic fervor, 
classicism, and keen appreciation both of moral and physical 
beauty. No one of them, perhaps, can be judiciously commended 
as a whole ; but no one of them is without merit, and there are 
several which would do credit to any poet in the land. Still, even 
these latter are particularly rather than generally commendable. 
They lack unity, totality — ultimate effect, but abound in forcible 
passages. For example : 

Shall I portray thee in thy glorious seeming, 
Thou that the pharos of my darkness art ? ... . 

Like the blue lotos on its own clear river 
Lie thy soft eyes, beloved, upon my soul 

And there the slave, a slave no more, 
Hung reverent up the chain he wore 

Here 'mid your wild and dark defile 
O'erawed and wonder-whelmed I stand, 

And ask — " is this the fearful vale 

That opens on the shadowy land ?".... 

Oh friends ! we would be treasured still, 

Though Time's cold hand should cast 
His misty veil, in after years, 

Over the idol Past, 
Yet send to us some offering thought 

O'er Memory's ocean wide, 
Pure as the Hindoo's votive lamp 

On Ganga's sacred tide. 

Mrs. Hewitt has warm partialities for the sea and all that con- 
cerns it. Many of her best poems turn upon sea adventures or 
have reference to a maritime life. Some portions of her " Gc 
bless the Mariner" are naive and picturesque : e. g. — 

God bless the happy mariner ! 

A homely garb wears he, 
And he goeth with a rolling gait, 

Like a ship before the sea. 



« 



MARY E. HEWITT. 117 



He hath piped the loud " ay, ay, Sir !" 

O'er the voices of the main 
Till his deep tones have the hoarseness 

Of the rising hurricane. 

But oh, a spirit looketh 

From out his clear blue eye, 
"With a truthful childlike earnestness, 

Like an angel from the sky. 

A venturous life the sailor leads 

Between the sky and sea, 
But, when the hour of dread is past, 

A merrier who than he ? 

The tone of some quatrains entitled " Alone," differs materially 
from that usual with Mrs. Hewitt. The idea is happy and well 
managed. 

Mrs. Hewitt's sonnets are upon the whole, her most praise- 
worthy compositions. One entitled " Hercules and Omphale " is 
noticeable for the vigor of its rhythm. 

Reclined, enervate, on the couch of ease, 

No more he pants for deeds of high emprize ; 
For Pleasure holds in soft voluptuous ties 

Enthralled, great Jove-descended Hercules. 

The hand that bound the Erymanthean boar, 
Hesperia's dragon slew with bold intent, 
That from his quivering side in triumph rent 

The skin the Gleonman lion wore, 

Holds forth the goblet — while the Lydian queen, 

Robed like a nymph, her brow enwreathed with vine, 
Lifts high the amphora brimmed with rosy wine, 

And pours the draught the crowned cup within. 

And thus the soul, abased to sensual sway, 

Its worth forsakes — its might foregoes for aye. 

The unusual force of the line italicized, will be observed. This 
force arises first, from the directness, or colloquialism without vul- 
garity, of its expression : — (the relative pronoun " which " is very 
happily omitted between " skin " and " the ") — and, secondly, to 
the musical repetition of the vowel in " Cleoneean", together with 
the alliterative terminations in " Cleonaean" and "liorc." The 
effect, also, is much aided by the sonorous conclusion " wore." 

Another and better instance of fine versification occurs in " For- 
gotten Heroes." 

And the peasant mother at her door, 

To the babe that climbed her knee, 

Sang aloud the land's heroic songs — 

Sang of Thermopylae — 
Sang of Mycale — of Marathon — 



118 MARY E. HEWITT. 



Of proud Plataea's day — 
Till the wakened hills from peak to peak 

Echoed the glorious lay. 
Oh, godlike name ! — oh, godlike deed ! 

Song-borne afar on every breeze, 
Ye are sounds to thrill like a battle shout, 

Leonidas ! Miltiades ! 

The general intention here is a line of four iambuses alternating 
with a line of three ; but, less through rhythmical skill than a 
musical ear, the poetess has been led into some exceedingly happy 
variations of the theme. For example ; — in place of the ordinary 
iambus as the first foot of the first, of the second, and of the 
third line, a bastard iambus has been employed. These lines are 
thus scanned : 

And the peas I ant moth | er at | her door | 

4 4 2 2 2 

To the babe I that climbed | her knee | 
4 4 2 2 

Sang aloud I the land's | hero | ic songs | 

4 4 2 2 2 

The fourth line, 

Sang of I Thermo I pylse, 
2 2 2 

is well varied by a trochee, instead of an iambus, in the first foot ; 
and the variation expresses forcibly the enthusiasm excited by the 
topic of the supposed songs, " Thermopylae". The fifth line is 
scanned as the three first. The sixth is the general intention, and 
consists simply of iambuses. The seventh is like the three first 
and the fifth. The eighth is like the fourth ; and here again the 
opening trochee is admirably adapted to the movement of the 
topic. The ninth is the general intention, and is formed of four 
iambuses. The tenth is an alternating line and yet has four iam- 
buses, instead of the usual three ; as has also the final line — an i 
alternating one, too. A fuller volume is in this manner given to 
the close of the subject ; and this volume is fully in keeping with 
the rising enthusiasm. The last line but one has two bastard 
iambuses, thus : 

Ye are sounds I to thrill I like a bat I tie shout I . 
4 4 2 4 4 2 

Upon the whole, it may be said that the most skilful versifier 
could not have written lines better suited to the purposes of the 



MARY E. HEWITT. 119 



poet. The errors of "Alone," however, and of Mrs. Hewitt's 
poems generally, show that we must regard the beauties pointed 
out above, merely in the light to which I have already alluded — 
that is to say, as occasional happiness to which the poetess is led 
by a musical ear. 

I should be doing this lady injustice were I not to mention 
that, at times, she rises into a higher and purer region of poetry 
than might be supposed, or inferred, from any of the passages 
which I have hitherto quoted. The conclusion of her " Ocean 
Tide to the Rivulet" puts me in mind of the rich spirit of 
Home's noble epic, " Orion." 

Sadly the flowers their faded petals close 
Where on thy banks they languidly repose, 

Waiting in vain to hear thee onward press ; 
And pale Narcissus by thy margin side 
Hath lingered for thy coming, drooped and died, 

Pining for thee amid the loneliness. 

Hasten, beloved ! — here ! 'neath the overhanging rock ! 
Hark ! from the deep, my anxious hope to mock, 

They call me back unto my parent main. 
Brighter than Thetis thou — and ah, more fleet ! 
I hear the rushing of thy fair vihite feet ! 

J°y '• j°y ' — m y breast receives its own again ! 

The personifications here are well managed. The " Here ! — ■ 
'neath the o'erhanging rock !" has the. high merit of being truth- 
fully, by which I mean naturally, expressed, and imparts exceed- 
ing vigor to the whole stanza. The idea of the ebb-tide, convey- 
ed in the second line italicized, is one of the happiest imaginable ; 
and too much praise can scarcely be bestowed on the " rushing" 
of the " fair white feet." The passage altogether is full of fancy, 
earnestness, and the truest poetic strength. Mrs. Hewitt has given 
many such indications of a fire which, with more earnest endeavor, 
might be readily fanned into flame. 

In character, she is sincere, fervent, benevolent — sensitive to 
praise and to blame ; in temperament melancholy ; in manner 
subdued ; converses earnestly yet quietly. In person she is tall 
and slender, with black hair and full gray eyes ; complexion dark ; 
general expression of the countenance singularly interesting and 
agreeable. 



120 RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE. 



RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE, 

About twelve years ago, I think, " The New York Sun," a 
daily paper, price one penny, was established in the city of New 
York by Mr. Moses Y. Beach, who engaged Mr. Richard Adams 
Locke as its editor. In a well-written prospectus, the object of 
the journal professed to be that of " supplying the public with 
the news of the day at so cheap a rate as to lie within the means 
of all." The consequences of the scheme, in their influence on 
the whole newspaper business of the country, and through this 
business on the interests of the country at large, are probably be- 
yond all calculation. 

Previous to " The Sun," there had been an unsuccessful attempt 
at publishing a penny paper in New York, and " The Sun " itself 
was originally projected and for a short time issued by Messrs. Day 
& Wisner ; its establishment, however, is altogether due to Mr. 
Beach, who purchased it of its disheartened originators. The 
first decided movement of the journal, nevertheless, is to be at- 
tributed to Mr. Locke ; and in so saying, I by no means intend 
any depreciation of Mr. Beach, since in the engagement of Mr. 
L. he had but given one of the earliest instances of that unusual 
sagacity for which I am inclined to yield him credit. 

At all events, " The Sun " was revolving in a comparatively 
narrow orbit when, one fine day, there appeared in its editorial 
columns a prefatory article announcing very remarkable astron- 
omical discoveries made at the Cape of Good Hope by Sir John 
Herschell. The information was said to have been received by 
" The Sun " from an early copy of " The Edinburgh Journal of 
Science," in which appeared a communication from Sir John him- 
self. This preparatory announcement took very well, (there had 
been no hoaxes in those days,) and was followed by full details of 
the reputed discoveries, which were now found to have been made 
chiefly in respect to the moon, and by means of a telescope to 
which the one lately constructed by the Earl of Rosse is a play- 
thing. As these discoveries were gradually spread before the 
public, the astonishment of that public grew out of all bounds ; 



/ 



RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE. 121 

but those who questioned the veracity of " The Sun " — the 
authenticity of the communication to " The Edinburgh Journal 
of Science " — were really very few indeed ; and this I am forced 
to look upon as a far more wonderful thing than any " man-bat " 
of them all. 

About six months before this occurrence, the Harpers had issued 
an American edition of Sir John Herschell's "Treatise on As- 
tronomy," and I have been much interested in what is there said 
respecting the possibility of future lunar investigations. The 
theme excited my fancy, and I longed to give free rein to it in 
depicting my day-dreams about the scenery of the moon — in 
short, I longed to write a story embodying these dreams. The 
obvious difficulty, of course, was that of accounting for the narra- 
tor's acquaintance with the satellite ; and the equally obvious 
mode of surmounting the difficulty was the supposition of an ex- 
traordinary telescope. I saw at once that the chief interest of 
such a narrative must depend upon the reader's yielding his 
credence in some measure as to details of actual fact. At this 
stage of my deliberations, I spoke of the design to one or two 
friends — to Mr. John P. Kennedy, the author of " Swallow Barn," 
among others — and the result of my conversations with them 
was that the optical difficulties of constructing such a telescope as 
I conceived were so rigid and so commonly understood, that it 
would be in vain to attempt giving due verisimilitude to any fic- 
tion having the telescope as a basis. Reluctantly, therefore, and 
only half convinced, (believing the public, in fact, more readily 
gullible than did my friends,) I gave up the idea of imparting 
very close verisimilitude to what I should write — that is to say, 
so close as really to deceive. I fell back upon a style half plausi- 
ble, half bantering, and resolved to give what interest I could to 
an actual passage from the earth to the moon, describing the lu- 
nar scenery as if surveyed and personally examined by the narra- 
tor. In this view I wrote a story which I called " Hans Phaall," 
publishing it about six months afterwards in " The Southern Lit- 
erary Messenger," of which I was then editor. 

It was three weeks after the issue of " The Messenger " con- 
taining "Hans Phaall," that the first of the "Moon-hoax" edi- 
torials made its appearance in " The Sun," and no sooner had I 

Vol. III.— 6 



122 RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE. 

seen the paper than I understood the jest, which not for a mo- 
ment could I doubt had been suggested by my own jeu cPesprit. 
Some of the New York journals (" The Transcript" among others) 
saw the matter in the same light, and published the " Moon story" 
side by side with " Hans Phaall," thinking that the author of the 
one had been detected in the author of the other. Although the 
details are, with some exception, very dissimilar, still I maintain 
that the general features of the two compositions are nearly 
identical. Both are hoaxes, (although one is in a tone of mere 
banter, the other of downright earnest ;) both hoaxes are on one 
subject, astronomy ; both on the same point of that subject, the 
moon ; both professed to have derived exclusive information from 
a foreign country, and both attempt to give plausibility by minute- 
ness of scientific detail. Add to all this, that nothing of a similar 
nature had ever been attempted before these two hoaxes, the one 
of which followed immediately upon the heels of the other. 

Having stated the case, however, in this form, I am bound to 
do Mr. Locke the justice to say that he denies having seen my 
article prior to the publication of his own ; I am bound to add, 
also, that I believe him. 

Immediately on the completion of the " Moon story," (it was 
three or four days in getting finished,) I wrote an examination of 
its claims to credit, showing distinctly its fictitious character, but 
was astonished at finding that I could obtain few listeners, so 
really eager were all to be deceived, so magical were the charms of 
a style that served as the vehicle of an exceedingly clumsy invention. 

It may afford even now some amusement to see pointed out 
those particulars of the hoax which should have sufficed to estab- 
lish its real character. Indeed, however rich the imagination dis- 
played in this fiction, it wanted much of the force which might 
have been given it by a more scrupulous attention to general an- 
alogy and to fact. That the public were misled, even for an in- 
stant, merely proves the gross ignorance which (ten or twelve 
years ago) was so prevalent on astronomical topics. 

The moon's distance from the earth is, in round numbers, 
240,000 miles. If we wish to ascertain how near, apparently, a 
lens would bring the satellite, (or any distant object,) we, of 
course, have but to divide the distance by the magnifying, or, more 



,1 



RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE. 123 

strictly, by the space-penetrating power of the glass. Mr. Locke 
gives his lens a power of 42,000 times. By this divide 240,000, 
(the moon's real distance,) and we have five miles and five-sevenths 
as the apparent distance. No animal could be seen so far, much 
less the minute points particularized in the story. Mr. L. speaks 
about Sir John Herschell's perceiving flowers, (the papaver Hheas, 
etc.,) and even detecting the color and the shape of the eyes of 
small birds. Shortly before, too, the author himself observes that 
the lens would not render perceptible objects less than eighteen 
inches in diameter ; but even this, as I have said, is giving the 
glass far too great a power. 

On page 18, (of the pamphlet edition,) speaking of " a hairy 
veil " over the eyes of a species of bison, Mr. L. says — " It imme- 
diately occurred to the acute mind of Doctor Herschell that this 
was a providential contrivance to protect the eyes of the animal 
from the great extremes of light and darkness to which all the 
inhabitants of our side of the moon are periodically subjected." 
But this should not be thought a very "acute" observation of 
the Doctor's. The inhabitants of our side of the moon have, evi- 
dently, no darkness at all ; in the absence of the sun they have 
a light from the earth equal to that of thirteen full moons, so 
that there can be nothing of the extremes mentioned. 

The topography throughout, even when professing to accord 
with Blunt's Lunar Chart, is at variance with that and all other 
lunar charts, and even at variance with itself. The points of the 
compass, too, are in sad confusion ; the writer seeming to be un- 
aware that, on a lunar map, these are not in accordance with ter- 
restial points — the east being to the left, and so forth. 

Deceived, perhaps, by the vague titles Mare Nubium, Mare 
Tranquilitatis, Mare Fcecunditatis, etc., given by astronomers of 
former times to the dark patches on the moon's surface, Mr. L. 
has long details respecting oceans and other large bodies of water 
in the moon ; whereas there is no astronomical point more posi- 
tively ascertained than that no such bodies exist there. In ex- 
amining the boundary between light and darkness in a crescent 
or gibbous moon, where this boundary crosses any of the dark 
places, the line of division is found to be jagged ; but were these 
dark places liquid, they would evidently be even. 



124 RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE. 

The description of the wings of the man-bat (on page 21) is 
but a literal copy of Peter Wilkins' account of the wings of his 
flying islanders. This simple fact should at least have induced 
suspicion. 

On page 23 we read thus — " What a prodigious influence must 
our thirteen times larger globe have exercised upon this satellite 
when an embryo in the womb of time, the passive subject of chem- 
ical affinity I" Now, this is very fine ; but it should be observed 
that no astronomer could have made such remark, especially to 
any " Journal of Science," for the earth in the sense intended (that 
of bulk) is not only thirteen but forty-nine times larger than the 
moon. A similar objection applies to the five or six concluding 
pages of the pamphlet, where, by way of introduction to some 
discoveries in Saturn, the philosophical correspondent is made to 
give a minute school-boy account of that planet — an account quite 
supererogatory, it might be presumed, in the case of " The Edin- 
burgh Journal of Science." 

But there is one point, in especial, which should have instantly 
betrayed the fiction. Let us imagine the power really possessed 
of seeing animals on the moon's surface — what in such case would 
first arrest the attention of an observer from the earth ? Certainly 
neither the shape, size, nor any other peculiarity in these animals 
so soon as their remarkable position — they would seem to be 
walking heels up and head down, after the fashion of flies on a 
ceiling. The real observer (however prepared by previous know- 
ledge) would have commented on this odd phenomenon before 
proceeding to other details ; the fictitious observer has not even 
alluded to the subject, but in the case of the man-bats speaks of 
seeing their entire bodies, when it is demonstrable that he could 
have seen little more than the apparently flat hemisphere of the 
head. 

I may as well observe, in conclusion, that the size, and espe- 
cially the powers of the man-bats, (for example, their ability to 
fly in so rare an atmosphere — if, indeed, the moon has any,) with 
most of the other fancies in regard to animal and vegetable exist- 
ence, are at variance generally with all analogical reasoning on 
these themes, and that analogy here will often amount to 
the most positive demonstration. The temperature of the moon, 






RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE. 125 

for instance, is rather above that of boiling water, and Mr. Locke, 
consequently, has committed a serious oversight in not represent- 
ing his man-bats, his bisons, his game of all kinds — to say nothing 
of his vegetables — as each and all done to a turn. 

It is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to add, that all the suggestions 
attributed to Brewster and Herschell in the beginning of the hoax, 
about the " transfusion of artificial light through the focal object 
of vision," etc., etc., belong to that species of figurative writing 
which comes most properly under the head of rigmarole. There 
is a real and very definite limit to optical discovery among the 
stars, a limit whose nature need only be stated to be understood. 
If, indeed, the casting of large lenses were all that is required, the 
ingenuity of man would ultimately prove equal to the task, and 
we might have them of any size demanded ;* but, unhappily, in 
proportion to the increase of size in the lens, and consequently of 
space-penetrating power, is the diminution of light from the object 
by diffusion of the rays. And for this evil there is no remedy 
within human reach ; for an object is seen by means of that light 
alone, whether direct or reflected, which proceeds from the object 
itself. Thus the only artificial light which could avail Mr. Locke, 
would be such as he should be able to throw, not upon " the focal 
object of vision," but upon the moon. It has been easily calcu- 
lated that when the light proceeding from a heavenly body be- 
comes so diffused as to be as weak as the natural light given out 
by the stars collectively in a clear, moonless night, then the hea- 
venly body for any practical purpose is no longer visible. 

The singular blunders to which I have referred being properly 
understood, we shall have all the better reason for wonder at the 
prodigious success of the hoax. Not one person in ten discredited 
it, and (strangest point of all !) the doubters were chiefly those 
who doubted without being able to say why — the ignorant, those 
uninformed in astronomy, people who would not believe because 
the thing was so novel, so entirely " out of the usual way." A 

* Neither of the Herschells dreamed of the possibility of a speculum six 
feet in diameter, and now the marvel has been triumphantly accomplished 
by Lord Rosse. There is, in fact, no physical impossibiliiy in our casting 
lenses of even fifty feet diameter or more. A sufficiency of means and skill 
is all that is demanded. 



126 RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE. 

grave professor of mathematics in a Virginian college told me 
seriously that he had no doubt of the truth of the whole affair ! 
The great effect wrought upon the public mind is referable, first, 
to the novelty of the idea ; secondly, to the fancy-exciting and 
reason-repressing character of the alledged discoveries ; thirdly, 
to the consummate tact with which the deception was brought 
forth ; fourthly, to the exquisite vraisemblance of the narration. 
The hoax was circulated to an immense extent, was translated 
into various languages — was even made the subject of (quizzical) 
discussion in astronomical societies ; drew down upon itself the 
grave denunciation of Dick, and was, upon the whole, decidedly 
the greatest hit in the way of sensation — of merely popular sensa- 
tion — ever made by any similar fiction either in America or in 
Europe. 

Having read the Moon story to an end, and found it anticipa- 
tive of all the main points of my " Hans Phaall," I suffered the 
latter to remain unfinished. The chief design in carrying my 
hero to the moon was to afford him an opportunity of describing 
the lunar scenery, but I found that he could add very little to the 
minute and authentic account of Sir John Herschell. The first 
part of " Hans Phaall," occupying about eighteen pages of " The 
Messenger," embraced merely a journal of the passage between 
the two orbs, and a few words of general observation on the most 
obvious features of the satellite ; the second part will most proba- 
bly never appear. I did not think it advisable even to bring my 
voyager back to his parent earth. He remains where I left him, 
and is still, I believe, " the man in the moon." 

From the epoch of the hoax " The Sun" shone with unmitigated 
splendor. The start thus given the paper insured it a triumph ; 
it has now a daily circulation of not far from fifty thousand copies, 
and is, therefore, probably, the most really influential journal of 
its kind in the world. Its success firmly established " the penny 
system" throughout the country, and {through " The Sun") conse- 
quently, we are indebted to the genius of Mr. Locke for one of 
the most important steps ever yet taken in the pathway of human 
progress. 

On dissolving, about a year afterwards, his connexion with Mr. 
Beach, Mr. Locke established a political daily paper, " The New 



RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE. 127 



Era," conducting it with distinguished ability. In this journal he 
made, very unwisely, an attempt at a second hoax, giving the 
finale of the adventures of Mungo Park in Africa — the writer pre- 
tending to have come into possession, by some accident, of the 
lost MSS. of the traveller. No one, however, seemed to be de- 
ceived, (Mr. Locke's columns were a suspected district,) and the 
adventures were never brought to an end. They were richly 
imaginative. 

The next point made by their author was the getting up a book 
on magnetism as the primum mobile of the universe, in connexion 
with Doctor Sherwood, the practitioner of magnetic remedies. 
The more immediate purpose of the treatise was the setting forth 
a new magnetic method of obtaining the longitude. The matter 
was brought before Congress and received with favorable attention. 
What definite action was had I know not. A review of the 
work appeared in " The Army and Navy Chronicle," and made 
sad havoc of the whole project. It was enabled to do this, how- 
ever, by attacking in detail the accuracy of some calculations of 
no very radical importance. These and others Mr. Locke is now 
engaged in carefully revising ; and my own opinion is that his 
theory (which he has reached more by dint of imagination than 
of anything else) will finally be established, although, perhaps, 
never thoroughly by him. 

His prose style is noticeable for its concision, luminousness, 
completeness — each quality in its proper place. He has that 
method so generally characteristic of genius proper. Everything 
he writes is a model in its peculiar way, serving just the purposes 
intended and nothing to spare. He has written some poetry, 
which, through certain radical misapprehensions, is not very 
good. 

Like most men of true imagination, Mr. Locke & a seemingly 
paradoxical compound of coolness and excitability. 

He is about five feet seven inches in height, symmetrically 
formed ; there is an air of distinction about his whole person — 
the air noble of genius. His face is strongly pitted by the small- 
pox, and, perhaps from the same cause, there is a marked obliquity 
in the eyes ; a certain calm, clear luminousness, however, about 
these latter, amply compensates for the defect, and the forehead 



128 ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH. 

is truly beautiful in its intellectuality. I am acquainted with no 
person possessing so fine a forehead as Mr. Locke. He is married, 
and about forty-five years of age, although no one would suppose 
him to be more than thirty-eight. He is a lineal descendant 
from the immortal author of the "Essay on the Human Under- 
standinof." 



ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH.* 

This is a very pretty little volume, neatly printed, handsomely 
bound, embracing some two hundred pages sixteen- mo. and in- 
troduced to the public, somewhat unnecessarily, in a preface by 
Dr. Rums W. Griswold. In this preface we find some few mem- 
oranda of the personal authoress, with some critical opinions in 
relation to her poems. The memoranda are meagre. A much 
more interesting account of Mrs. Smith is given by Mr. John Neal, 
and was included by Mr. John Keese in the introduction to a 
former collection of her works. The critical opinions may as well 
be here quoted, at least in part. Dr. Griswold says : 

Seeking expression, yet shrinking from notoriety, and with a full share of 
that respect for a just fame and appreciation which belongs to every high- 
toned mind, yet oppressed by its shadow when circumstance is the impelling 
motive of publication, the writings of Mrs. Smith might well be supposed to 
betray great inequality ; still in her many contributions to the magazines, it 
is remarkable how few of her pieces display the usual carelessness and haste 
of magazine articles. As an essayist especially, while graceful and lively, 
she is compact and vigorous ; while through poems, essays, tales, and criti- 
cisms, (for her industrious pen seems equally skilful and happy in each of 
these departments of literature,) through all her manifold writings, indeed, 
there runs the same beautiful vein of philosophy, viz. : — that truth and good- 
ness of themselves impart a holy light to the mind which gives it a power 
far above mere intellectuality ; that the highest order of human intelligence 

springs from the moral and not the reasoning faculties Mrs. Smith's 

most popular poem is " The Acorn," which, though inferior in high inspira- 
tion to " The Sinless Child," is by many preferred for its happy play of fancy 
and proper finish. Her sonnets, of which she has written many, have not 
yet been as much admired as the " April Rain," " The Brook," and other 
fugitive pieces, which we find in many popular collections. 

" The Sinless Child " was originally published in the " Southern 
Literary Messenger," where it at once attracted much attention 

* The Poetical writings of Elizabeth Oakes Smith. First complete edi- 
tion. ISTew York. J. S. Redfield. 



ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH. 129 

from the novelty of its conception and the general grace and pu 
rity of its style. Undoubtedly it is one of the most original 
of American -poems — surpassed in this respect, we think, only by 
Maria del Occidente's " Bride of Seven." Of course, we speak 
merely of long poems. We have had in this country many brief 
fugitive pieces far excelling in this most important point (origi- 
nality) either "The Bride of Sevev," or "The Sinless Child " — 
far excelling, indeed, any translanac poems. After all, it is chiefly 
in works of what is absurdly termed "sustained effort" that we 
fall in any material respect behind our progenitors. 

" The Sinless Child " is quite long, including more than two 
hundred stanzas, generally of eight lines. The metre through- 
out is iambic tetrameter, alternating with trimeter — in other words, 
lines of four iambuses alternate with lines of three. The varia- 
tions from this order are rare. The design of the poem is very 
imperfectly made out. The conception is much better than the 
execution. " A simple cottage maiden, Eva, given to the world 
in the widowhood of one parent and the angelic existence of the 

other is found from her birth to be as meek and gentle 

as are those pale flowers that look imploringly upon us. . . . She 
is gifted with the power of interpreting the beautiful mysteries of 

our earth For her the song, of the bird is not merely the 

gushing forth of a nature too full of blessedness to be silent .... 
the humblest plant, the simplest insect, is each alive with truth. 
.... She sees the world not merely with mortal eyes, but looks 
within to the pure internal life of which the outward is but a 
type," etc., etc. These passages are taken from the Argument 
prefixed to Part I. The general thesis of the poetess may, per- 
haps, be stated as the demonstration that the superior wisdom is 
moral rather than intellectual ; but it may be doubted whether 
her subject was ever precisely apparent to herself. In a word, 
she seems to have vacillated between several conceptions — the only 
very definite idea being that of extreme beauty and purity in a 
child. At one time we fancy her, for example, attempting to 
show that the condition of absolute sanctity is one through which 
mortality may know all things and hold converse with the an- 
gels ; at another we suppose it her purpose to "create " (in criti- 
cal language) an entirely novel being, a something that is neither 

6* 



ISO ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH. 

angel nor mortal, nor yet fairy in the ordinary sense — in a word, 
ai>0*%iual ens. Besides these two prominent fancies, however, 
there are various others which seem continually flitting in and 
out of the poet's vision, so that her whole work has an indeter- 
minate air. Of this ~ she apparently becomes conscious towards 
the conclusion, and in the final stanza endeavors to remedy the 
difficulty by summing up he v design — 

The sinless child, with mission high, 

Awhile to earth was given, 
To show us that ou> world should be 

The vestibule of heaven. 
Did we but in the holy light 

Of truth and goodness rise, 
"We might communion hold with God 

And spirits from the skies. 

The conduct of the narrative is scarcely more determinate — if, 
indeed, " The Sinless Child " can be said to include a narrative 
at all. The poem is occupied in its first part with a description 
of the child, her saintly character, her lone wanderings, the lessons 
she deduces from all animal and vegetable things, and her com- 
munings with the angels. We have then discussions with her 
mother, who is made to introduce episodical tales, one of " Old 
Richard," another called " The Defrauded Heart," (a tale of a 
miser,) and another entitled " The Stepmother." Towards the 
end of the poem a lover, Alfred Linne, is brought upon the scene. 
He has been reckless and sinful, but is reclaimed by the heavenly 
nature of Eva. He finds her sleeping in a forest. At this point 
occur some of the finest and most characteristic passages of the 

poem. 

Unwonted thought, unwonted calm 

Upon his spirit fell ; 
For he unwittingly had sought 

Young Eva's hallowed dell, 
And breathed that atmosphere of love, 

Around her path that grew : 
That evil from her steps repelled 

The good unto her drew. 

Mem. — The last quatrain of this stanza would have been more 
readily comprehended if punctuated and written thus — 

And breathed that atmosphere of love 

Around her path that grew — 
That evil from her steps repelled — 

That good unto her drew. 



J 



ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH. 131 

We may as well observe here, too, that although neatly printed, 
the volume abounds in typographical errors that very frequently 
mar the sense — as at page 66, for example, where come (near the 
bottom) is improperly used for came, and scorching (second line 
from the top) is substituted for searching. We proceed with Al- 
fred's discovery of Eva in the wood. 

Now Eva opes her child-like eyes 

And lifts her tranquil head ; 
And Albert, like a guilty thing, 

Had from her presence fled. 
But Eva marked his troubled brow, 

His sad and thoughtful eyes, 
As if they sought yet shrank to hold 

Their converse with the skies. 

Communion with the skies — would have been far better. It 
seems strange to us that any one should have overlooked the 
word. 

And all her kindly nature stirred, 

She prayed him to remain ; 
Well conscious that the pure have power 

To balm much human pain. 
There mingled too, as in a dream, 

About brave Albert Linne, 
A real and ideal form 
Her soul had formed within. 

We give the punctuation here as we find it ; — it is incorrect 
throughout, interfering materially with a proper understanding 
of the passage. There should be a comma after " And " in the 
first line, a comma in place of the semicolon at the end of the 
second line, no point at the end of the third line, a comma after 
" mingled," and none after " form." These seeming minutiw are 
of real importance ; but we refer to them, in case of " The Sin- 
less Child," because here the aggregate of this species of minor 
error is unusually remarkable. Of course it is the proof-reader or 
editor, and not Mrs. Smith, who is to blame. 

Her trusting hand fair Eva laid 

In that of Albert Linne, 
And for one trembling moment turned 

Her gentle thoughts within. 
Deep tenderness was in the glance 

That rested on his face, 
As if her woman-heart had found 

Its own abiding-place. 



132 ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH. 

And evermore to him it seemed 

Her voice more liquid grew — 
" Dear youth, thy soul and mine are one ; 

One source their being drew ! 
And they must mingle evermore — 

Thy thoughts of love and me 
Will, as a light, thy footsteps guide 

To life and mystery." 

There was a sadness in her tone, 

But love unfathomed deep ; 
As from the centre of the soul 

Where the divine may sleep ; 
Prophetic was the tone and look, 

And Albert's noble heart 
Sank with a strange foreboding dread 

Lest Eva should depart. 

And when she bent her timid eyes 

As she beside him knelt, 
The pressure of her sinless lips 

Upon his brow he felt, 
And all of earth and all of sin 

Fled from her sainted side ; 
She, the pure virgin of the soul, 

Ordained young Albert's bride. 

It would, perhaps, have been out of keeping with the more ob- 
vious plan of the poem to make Eva really the bride of Albert. 
She does not wed him, but dies tranquilly in bed, soon after the 
spiritual union in the forest. " Eva," says the Argument of Part 
VII., " hath fulfilled her destiny. Material things can no farther 
minister to the growth of her spirit. That waking of the soul 
to its own deep mysteries — its oneness with another — has been 
accomplished. A human soul is perfected." At this point the 
poem may be said to have its conclusion. 

In looking back at its general plan, we cannot fail to see traces 
of high poetic capacity. The first point to be commended is the 
reach or aim of the poetess. She is evidently discontented with 
the bald routine of common-place themes, and originality has been 
with her a principal object. In all cases of fictitious composition 
it should be the first object — by which we do not mean to say 
that it can ever be considered as the most important. But, certe- 
ris paribus, every class of fiction is the better for originality ; 
every writer is false to his own interest if he fails to avail himself, 
at the outset, of the effect which is certainly and invariably deri- 
vable from the great element, novelty. 



ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH. 



The execution of " The Sinless Child" is, as we have already- 
said, inferior to its conception — that is, to its conception as it 
floated, rather than steadily existed, in the brain of the authoress. 
She enables us to see that she has very narrowly missed one of 
those happy " creations" which now and then immortalize the 
poet. With a good deal more of deliberate thought before put- 
ting pen to paper, with a good deal more of the constructive abili- 
ty, and with more rigorous discipline in the minor merits of style, 
and of what is termed in the school-prospectuses, composition, 
Mrs. Smith would have made of " The Sinless Child" one of the 
best, if not the very best of American poems. While speaking 
of the execution, or, more properly, the conduct of the work, we 
may as well mention, first, the obviousness with which the stories 
introduced by Eva's mother are interpolated, or episodical ; it is 
permitted every reader to see that they have no natural con- 
nexion with the true theme ; and, indeed, there can be no doubt 
that they were written long before the main narrative was pro- 
jected. In the second place, we must allude to the artificiality of 
the Arguments, or introductory prose passages, prefacing each 
Part of the poem. Mrs. Smith had no sounder reason for employ- 
ing them than Milton and the rest of the epicists have employe u 
them before. If it be said that they are necessary for the propel 
comprehension of a poem, we reply that this is saying nothing for 
them, but merely much against the poem which demands them as 
a necessity. Every work of art should contain within itself all 
that is required for its own comprehension. An " argument" is 
but another form of the " This is an ox" subjoined to the portrait 
of an animal with horns. But in making these objections to the 
management of " The Sinless Child," we must not be under- 
stood as insisting upon them as at all material, in view of the 
lofty merit of originality — a merit which pervades and invigorates 
the whole work, and which, in our opinion, at least, is far, very- 
far more than sufficient to compensate for every inartisticality of 
construction. A work of art may be admirably constructed, and 
yet be null as regards every essentiality of that truest art which 
is but the happiest development of nature ; but no work of art can 
embody within itself a proper originality without giving the 
plainest manifestations of the creative spirit, or, in more common 



134 ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH. 

parlance, of genius in its author. The originality of " The Sinless 
Child" would cover a multitude of greater defects than Mrs. 
Smith ever committed, and must forever entitle it to the admira- 
tion and respect of every competent critic. 

As regards detatched passages, we think that the episode of 
" The Stepmother" may be fairly cited as the best in the poem 

You speak of Hobert's second wife, a lofty dame and bold ; 
I like not her forbidding air, and forehead high and cold. 
The orphans have no cause for grief; she dare not give it now, 
Though nothing but a ghostly fear her heart of pride could bow. 

One night the boy his mother called ; they heard him weeping say, 
■ Sweet mother, kiss poor Eddy's cheek and wipe his tears away." 
Red grew the lady's brow with rage, and yet she feels a strife 
Of anger and of terror, too, at thought of that dead wife. 

"Wild roars the wind ; the lights burn blue ; the watch-dog howls with fear ; 
Loud neighs the steed from out the stall. What form is gliding near ? 
No latch is raised, no step is heard, but a phantom fills the space — 
A sheeted spectre from the dead, with cold and leaden face. 

What boots it that no other eye beheld the shade appear ? 

The guilty lady's guilty soul beheld it plain and clear. 

It slowly glides within the room and sadly looks around, 

And, stooping, kissed her daughter's cheek with lips that gave no sound. 

Then softly on the step-dame's arm she laid a death-cold hand, 
Yet it hath scorched within the flesh like to a burning brand ; 
And gliding on with noiseless foot, o'er winding stair and hall, 
She nears the chamber where is heard her infant's trembling call. 

She smoothed the pillow where he lay, she warmly tucked the bed, 
She wiped his tears and stroked the curls that clustered round his head. 
The child, caressed, unknowing fear, hath nestled him to rest ; 
The mother folds her wings beside — the mother from the blest ! 

The metre of this episode has been altered from its original 
form, and, we think, improved by the alteration. Formerly, in 
place of four lines of seven iambuses, the stanza consisted of eight 
lines — a line of four iambuses alternating with one of three — a 
more ordinary and artificial, therefore a less desirable arrange- 
ment. In the three last quatrains there is an awkward vacillation 
between the present and perfect tenses, as in the words " beheld," 
"glides," "kissed," "laid," "hath scorched," "smoothed," 
" wiped," " hath nestled," " folds." These petty objections, of 
course, will by no means interfere with the reader's appreciation 
of the episode, with his admiration of its pathos, its delicacy and 
its grace — we had almost forgotten to say of its pure and high 
imagination. 



ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH. 135 

We proceed to cull from " The Sinless Child," a few brief but 
happy passages at random. 

Gentle she was and full of love, 
With voice exceeding sweet, 
And eyes of dove-like tenderness 
Where joy and sadness meet. 

with calm and tranquil eye 

That turned instinctively to seek 
The blueness of the sky. 

Bright missals from angelic throngs 

In every bye-way left — 
How were the earth of glory shorn 

Were it of flowers bereft ! 

And wheresoe'er the weary heart 

Turns in its dim despair, 
The meek-eyed blossom upward looks, 

Inviting it to prayer. 

The very winds were hushed to peace 

Within the quiet dell. 
Or murmured through the rustling bough 

Like breathings of a shell. 

The mystery of life ; 
Its many hopes, its many fears, 

Its sorrow and its strife — 
A spirit to behold in all 

To guide, admonish, cheer, — 
Forever, in all time and place, 

To feel an angel near. 

I may not scorn the spirit's rights, 

For I have seen it rise, 
All written o'er with thought, thought, thought, 

As with a thousand eyes ! 

And there are things that blight the soul 

As with a mildew blight, 
And in the temple of the Lord 

Put out the blessed light. 

It is in the point of passages such as these, in their vigor, terse- 
ness and novelty, combined with exquisite delicacy, that the more 
obvious merit of the poem consists. A thousand such quotable 
paragraphs are interspersed through the work, and of themselves 
would be sufficient to insure its popularity. But we repeat that 
a far loftier excellence lies perdu amid the minor deficiencies of 
"The Sinless Child." 



136 ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH. 

The other poems of the volume are, as entire compositions, 
nearer perfection, but, in general, have less of the true poetical 
element. " The Acorn" is perfect as regards its construction — 
although, to be sure, the design is so simple that it could scarcely 
be marred in its execution. The idea is the old one of detailing 
the progress of a plant from its germ to its maturity, with the 
uses and general vicissitudes to which it is subjected. In this 
case of the acorn the vicissitudes are well imagined, and the exe- 
cution is more skilfully managed — is more definite, vigorous and 
pronounced, than in the longer poem. The chief of the minor 
objections is to the rhythm, which is imperfect, vacillating awk- 
wardly between iambuses and anapaests, after such fashion that it 
is impossible to decide whether the rhythm in itself — that is, 
whether the general intention is anapaestical or iambic. Ana- 
paests introduced, for the relief of monotone, into an iambic 
rhythm, are not only admissible but commendable, if not abso- 
lutely demanded ; but in this case they prevail to such an extent 
as to overpower the iambic intention, thus rendering the whole 
versification difficult of comprehension. We give, by way of ex- 
ample, a stanza with the scanning divisions and quantities : 

They came | with gifts | that should life | bestow ; | 

The dew | and the li | ving air — | 
The bane | that should work | its dead | ly wo, | 

The lit | tie men | had there ; | 
In the gray | moss cup | was the mil | dew brought, | 

The worm | in a rose- | leaf rolled, | 
And ma | ny things | with destruc j tion fraught | 
That its doom | were quick | ly told, j 
Here iambuses and anapaests are so nearly balanced that the 
ear hesitates to receive the rhythm as either anapaestic or iambic, 
that is, it hesitates to receive it as anything at all. A rhythm 
should always be distinctly marked by its first foot — that is to 
say, if the design is iambic, we should commence with an unmis- 
takeable iambus, and proceed with this foot until the ear gets 
fairly accustomed to it before we attempt variation ; for which, 
indeed, there is no necessity unless for the relief of monotone. 
When the rhythm is in this manner thoroughly recognised, we 
may sparingly vary with anapaests (or, if the rhythm be trochaic, 



ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH. 137 

with dactyls). Spondees, still more sparingly, as absolute dis- 
cords, may be also introduced either in an iambic or trochaic 
rhythm. In common with a very large majority of American, 
and, indeed, of European poets, Mrs. Smith seems to be totally 
unacquainted with the principles of versification — by which, of 
course, we mean its rationale. Of technical rules on the subject 
.there are rather more than enough in our prosodies, and from 
these abundant rules are deduced the abundant blunders of our 
poets. There is not a prosody in existence which is worth the 
paper on which it is printed. 

Of the miscellaneous poems included in the volume before us, 
we greatly prefer " The Summons Answered." It has more of 
power, more of genuine imagination than anything written by its 
author. It is a story of three " bacchanals," who, on their way 
from the scene of their revelry, are arrested by the beckoning of a 
white hand from the partially unclosing door of a tomb. One of 
the party obeys the summons. It is the tomb of his wife. We 
quote the two concluding stanzas : 

This restless life with its little fears, 

Its hopes that fade so soon, 
With its yearning tenderness and tears, 
And the burning agony that sears — 

The sun gone down at noon — 
The spirit crushed to its prison wall, 

Mindless of all beside — 
This young Richard saw, and felt it all — 

Well might the dead abide ! 

The crimson light in the east is high, 

The hoar-frost coldly gleams, 
And Richard chilled to the heart well-nigh, 
Hath raised his wildered and bloodshot eye 

From that long night of dreams. 
He shudders to think of the reckless band 

And the fearful oath he swore — 
But most he thinks of the clay-cold hand, 

That opened the old tomb door. 

With the quotation of these really noble passages — noble, be- 
cause full of the truest poetic energy — we take leave of the fair 
authoress. She is entitled, beyond doubt, to all, and perhaps to 
much more than the commendation she has received. Her faults 
are among the peccadilloes, and her merits among the sterling 
excellencies of the muse. 



13S J. G. C. BRAINARD. 



J. G. C BRAINARD. 

Among all the pioneers of American literature, whether prose 
or poetical, there is not one whose productions have not been 
much overrated by his countrymen. But this fact is more espe- 
cially obvious in respect to such of these pioneers as are no longer 
living, — nor is it a fact of so deeply transcendental a nature as 
only to be accounted for by the Emersons and Alcotts. In the 
first place, we have but to consider that gratitude, surprise, and a 
species of hyper-patriotic triumph have been blended, and finally 
confounded with mere admiration, or appreciation, in respect to 
the labors of our earlier writers ; and, in the second place, that 
Death has thrown his customary veil of the sacred over these 
commingled feelings, forbidding them, in a measure, to be now 
separated or subjected to analysis. " In speaking of the de- 
ceased," says that excellent old English Moralist, James Puckle, 
in his " Gray Cap for a Green Head," " so fold up your discourse 
that their virtues may be outwardly shown, while their vices are 
wrapped up in silence." And with somewhat too inconsiderate a 
promptitude have we followed the spirit of this quaint advice. 
The mass of American readers have been, hitherto, in no frame 
of mind to view with calmness, and to discuss with discrimination, 
the true claims of the few who wei'e Jirst in convincing the mother 
country that her sons were not all brainless, as, in the plenitude 
of her arrogance, she, at one period, half affected and half wished 
to believe ; and where any of these few have departed from 
among us, the difficulty of bringing their pretensions to the test 
of a proper criticism has been enhanced in a very remarkable de- 
gree. But even as concerns the living : is there any one so blind 
as not to see that Mr. Cooper, for example, owes much, and that 
Mr. Paulding owes all of his reputation as a novelist, to his early 
occupation of the field ? Is there any one so dull as not to know 
that fictions which neither Mr. Paulding nor Mr. Cooper could 
have written, are daily published by native authors without at- 
tracting more of commendation than can be crammed into a hack 
newspaper paragraph ? And, again, is there any one so preju- 



1 



J. G. C. BRAIN ARD. 139 



diced as not to acknowledge that all this is because there is no 
longer either reason or wit in the query, — " Who reads an Ameri- 
can book ?" It is not because we lack the talent in which the 
days of Mr. Paulding exulted, but because such talent has shown 
itself to be common. It is not because we have no Mr. 
Coopers ; but because it has been demonstrated that we might, 
at any moment, have as many Mr. Coopers as we please. In fact 
we are now strong in our own resources. We have, at length, 
arrived at that epoch when our literature may and must stand on 
its own merits, or fall through its own defects. We have snapped 
asunder the leading-strings of our British Grandmamma, and, 
better still, we have survived the first hours of our novel freedom, 
—the first licentious hours of a hobbledehoy braggadocio and 
swagger. At last, then, we are in a condition to be criticised — 
even more, to be neglected ; and the journalist is no longer in 
danger of being impeached for lese majeste of the Democratic 
Spirit, who shall assert, with sufficient humility, that we have 
committed an error in mistaking " Kettell's Specimens" for the 
Pentateuch, or Joseph Rodman Drake for Apollo. 

The case of this latter gentleman is one which well illustrates 
what we have been saying. We believe it was about 1835 that 
Mr. Dearborn republished the " Culprit Fay," which then, as at 
the period of its original issue, was belauded by the universal 
American press, in a manner which must have appeared ludicrous 
— not to speak very plainly — in the eyes of all unprejudiced ob- 
servers. With a curiosity much excited by comments at once so 
grandiloquent and so general, we procured and read the poem. 
What we found it we ventured to express distinctly, and at some 
length, in the pages of the " Southern Messenger." It is a well- 
versified and sufficiently fluent composition, without high merit 
of any kind. Its defects are gross and superabundant. Its plot 
and conduct, considered in reference to its scene, are absurd. Its 
originality is none at all. Its imagination (and this was the great 
feature insisted upon by its admirers,) is but a " counterfeit pre- 
sentment," — but the shadow of the shade of that lofty quality 
which is, in fact, the soul of the Poetic Sentiment — but a drivel- 
ling effort to be fanciful — an effort resulting in a species of hop- 
skip- an d-go-merry rhodomontade, which the uninitiated feel it a 



140 J. G. C. BRAINARD. 



duty to call ideality, and to admire as such, while lost in surprise 
at the impossibility of performing at least the latter half of the 
duty with any thing like satisfaction to themselves. And all this 
we not only asserted, but without difficulty proved. Dr. Drake 
has written some beautiful poems, but the " Culprit Fay," is not 
of them. We neither expected to hear any dissent from our 
opinions, nor did we hear any. On the contrary, the approving 
voice of every critic in the country whose dictum we had been 
accustomed to respect, was to us a sufficient assurance that we 
had not been very grossly in the wrong. In fact the public taste 
was then approaching the right. The truth indeed had not, as 
yet, made itself heard ; but we had reached a point at which it 
had but to be plainly and boldly put, to be, at least tacitly 
admitted. 

This habit of apotheosising our literary pioneers was a most 
indiscriminating one. Upon all who wrote, the applause was 
plastered with an impartiality really refreshing. Of course, the 
system favored the dunces at the expense of true merit ! and, since 
there existed a certain fixed standard of exao-o-erated commenda- 

So 

tion to which all were adapted after the fashion of Procrustes, it 
is clear that the most meritorious required the least stretching, — 
in other words, that although all were much overrated, the de- 
serving were overrated in a less degree than the unworthy. Thus 
with Brainard : — a man of indisputable genius, who, in any more 
discriminate system of panegyric, would have been long ago be- 
puffed into Demi-Deism ; for if " M'Fingal," for example, is in 
reality what we have been told, the commentators upon Trumbull, 
as a matter of the simplest consistency, should have exalted into 
the seventh heaven of poetical dominion the author of the many 
graceful and vigorous effusions which are now lying, in a very 
neat little volume, before us.* 

Yet we maintain that even these effusions have been over- 
praised, and materially so. It is not that Brainard has not writ- 
ten poems which may rank with those of any American, with the 
single exception of Longfellow — but that the general merit of our 

* The Poems of John Q. G. Brainard. A New and Authentic Collection, 
with an original Memoir of his Life. Hartford : Edward Hopkins. 



I 



J. G. C. BRAINARD. 141 



whole national Muse has been estimated too highly, and that the 
author of " The Connecticut River" has, individually, shared in 
the exaggeration. No poet among us has composed what would 
deserve the tithe of that amount of approbation so innocently 
lavished upon Brainard. But it would not suit our purpose just 
now, to enter into any elaborate analysis of his productions. It 
so happens, however, that we open the book at a brief poem, an 
examination of which will stand us in good stead of this general 
analyses, since it is by this very poem that the admirers of its 
author are content to swear — since it is the fashion to cite it as 
his best — since thus, in short, it is the chief basis of his notoriety, 
if not the surest triumph of his feme. 

We allude to " The Fall of Niagara," and shall be pardoned 
for quoting it in full. 

The thoughts are strange that crowd into my brain 

While I look upward to thee. It would seem 

As if God poured thee from his hollow hand, 

And hung his brow upon thy awful front, 

And spoke in that loud voice which seemed to him 

Who dwelt in Patmos for his Saviour's sake 

The " sound of many waters" and had bade 

Thy flood to chronicle the ages back 

And notch his centuries in the eternal rocks. 

Deep calleth unto deep. And what are we 
That hear the question of that voice sublime ? 
O, what are all the notes that ever rung 
From war's vain trumpet by thy thundering side ? 
Yea, what is all the riot man can make 
In his short life to thy unceasing roar ? 
And yet, bold babbler, what art thou to him 
Who drowned a world and heaped the waters far 
Above its loftiest mountains ? — a light wave 
That breaks and whispers of its Maker's might. 

It is a very usual thing to hear these verses called not merely 
the best of their author, but the best which have been written on 
the subject of Niagara. Its positive merit appears to us only 
partial. We have been informed that the poet had seen the great 
cataract before writing the lines ; but the Memoir prefixed to the 
present edition, denies what, for our own part, we never believed, 
for Brainard was truly a poet, and no poet could have looked 
upon Niagara, in the substance, and written thus about it. If he 
saw it at all, it must have been in fancy — " at a distance" — " rt ? — 



142 J. G. C. BRAIN ARD. 



as the lying Pindar says lie saw Archilocus, who died ages before 
the villain was born. 

To the two opening verses we have no objection ; but it may 
be well observed, in passing, that had the mind of the poet been 
really " crowned with strange thoughts," and not merely engaged 
in an endeavor to think, he would have entered at once upon the 
thoughts themselves, without allusion to the state of his brain. 
His subject would have left him no room for self. 

The third line embodies an absurd, and impossible, not to say 
a contemptible image. We are called upon to conceive a similarity 
between the continuous downward sweep of Niagara, and the 
momentary splashing of some definite and of course trifling quan- 
tity of water from a hand ; for, although it is the hand of the Deity 
himself which is referred to, the mind is irresistibly led, by the 
words " poured from his hollow hand," to that idea which has 
been customarily attached to such phrase. It is needless to say, 
moreover, that the bestowing upon Deity a human form, is at 
best a low and most unideal conception.* In fact the poet has 
committed the grossest of errors in likening the fall to any mate- 
rial object ; for the human fancy can fashion nothing which shall 
not be inferior in majesty to the cataract itself. Thus bathos is 
inevitable ; and there is no better exemplification of bathos than 
Mr. Brainard has here given.f 

* The Humanitarians held that God was to be understood as having really 
a human form — See Clarke's Sermons, vol. I. page 26, foL edit. 

" The drift of Milton's argument leads him to employ language which 
would appear, at first sight, to yerge upon their doctrine : but it will be seen 
immediately that he guards himself against the charge of having adopted one 
of the most ignorant errors of the dark ages of the church." — Dr. Summer's 
Notes on Milton's " Christian Doctrine." 

The opinion could never have been very general. Andens, a Syrian of 
Mesopotamia, who lived in the fourth century, was condemned for the doc- 
trine, as heretical. His few disciples were called Anthropmorphites. — &ee 
Du Pin. 

f It is remarkable that Drake, of whose " Culprit Fay" we have just spo- 
ken is, perhaps, the sole poet who has employed, in the description of Nia- 
gara, imagery which does not produce a pathetic impression. In one of his 
minor poems he has these magnificent lines : 



How sweet 'twould be, when all the air 
In moonlight swims, along the river 



I 



J. a C. BRAINARD. 143 



The fourth line but renders the matter worse, for here the 
figure is most inartistically shifted. The handful of water be- 
comes animate ; for it has a front — that is, a forehead, and upon 
this forehead the Deity proceeds to hang a bow, that is, a rain- 
bow. At the same time he " speaks in that loud voice/' &c. ; 
and here it is obvious that the ideas of the writer are in a sad 
state of fluctuation ; for he transfers the idiosyncrasy of the fall 
itself (that is to say its sound) to the one who pours it from his 
hand. But not content with all this, Mr. Brainard commands 
the flood to keep a kind of tally ; for this is the low thought 
which the expression about " notching in the rocks" immediately 
and inevitably induces. The whole of this first division of the 
poem, embraces, we hesitate not to say, one of the most jarring, 
inappropriate, mean, and in every way monstrous assemblages of 
false imagery, which can be found out of the tragedies of Nat 
Lee, or the farces of Thomas Carlyle. 

In the latter division, the poet recovers himself, as if ashamed 
of his previous bombast. His natural instinct (for Brainard was 
no artist) has enabled him to feel that subjects which surpass in 
grandeur all efforts of the human imagination are well depicted 
only in the simplest and least metaphorical language — a proposi- 
tion as susceptible of demonstration as any in Euclid. Accord- 
ingly, we find a material sinking in tone ; although he does not 
at once discard all imagery. The " Deep calleth unto deep" is 
nevertheless a great improvement upon his previous rhetorician- 
ism. The personification of the waters above and below would 
be good in reference to any subject less august. The moral re- 
flections which immediately follow, have at least the merit of 
simplicity ; but the poet exhibits no very lofty imagination when 
he bases these reflections only upon the cataract's superiority to 
man in the noise it can create ; nor is the concluding idea more 



To couch upon the grass and hear 
Niagara's everlasting voice 

Far in the deep blue West away ; 
That dreamy and poetic noise 

"We mark not in the glare of day — 
Oh, how unlike its torrent-cry 

When o'er the brink the tide is driven 
As if the vast and sheeted sky 

In thunder fell from Heaven ! 



144 J. G. C. BRAINARD. 



spirited, where the mere difference between the quantity of water 
which occasioned the flood, and the quantity which Niagara pre- 
cipitates, is made the measure of the Almighty Mind's superiority 
to that cataract which it called by a thought into existence. 

But although "The Fall of Niagara" does not deserve all the 
unmeaning commendation it has received, there are, nevertheless, 
many truly beautiful poems in this collection, and even more cer- 
tain evidences of poetic power. " To a Child, the Daughter of a 
Friend" is exceedingly graceful and terse. " To the Dead" has 
equal grace, with more vigor, and, moreover, a touching air of 
melancholy. Its melody is very rich, and in the monotonous 
repetition, at each stanza, of a certain rhyme, we recognise a fan- 
tastic yet true imagination. " Mr. Merry's Lament for Long 
Tom" would be worthy of all praise were not its unusually beau- 
tiful rhythm an imitation from Campbell, who would deserve his 
high poetical rank, if only for its construction. Of the merely 
humorous pieces we have little to say. Such things are not 
poetry. Mr. Brainard excelled in them, and they are very good 
in their place ; but that place is not in a collection of poems. 
The prevalent notions upon this head are extremely vague ; yet 
we see no reason why any ambiguity should exist. Humor, with 
an exception to be made hereafter, is directly antagonistical to 
that which is the soul of the Muse proper ; and the omni-prevalent 
belief, that melancholy is inseparable from the higher manifesta- 
tions of the beautiful, is not without a firm basis in nature and in 
reason. But it so happens that humor and that quality which 
we have termed the soul of the Muse (imagination) are both es- 
sentially aided in their development by the same adventitious 
assistance— that of rhythm and of rhyme. Thus the only bond 
between humorous verse and poetry, properly so called, is that 
they employ in common, a certain tool. But this single circum- 
stance has been sufficient to occasion, and to maintain through 
long ages, a confusion of two very distinct ideas in the brain of 
the unthinking critic. There is, nevertheless, an individual branch 
of humor which blends so happily with the ideal, that from the 
union result some of the finest effects of legitimate poesy. We 
allude to what is termed "archness" — a trait with which popular 
feeling, which is unfailingly poetic, has invested, for example, the 



RUFUS DAWES. H5 



whole character of the fairy. In the volume before us there is a 
brief composition entitled " The Tree Toad" which will afford a 
fine exemplification of our idea. It seems to have been hurriedly 
constructed, as if its author had felt ashamed of his light labor. 
But that in his heart there was a secret exultation over these 
verses for which his reason found it difficult to account, we know ; 
and there is not a really imaginative man within sound of our 
voice to-day, who, upon perusal of this little " Tree Toad" will 
not admit it to be one of the truest poems ever written by 
Brainard. 



RUFUS DAWES. 

" As a poet," says Mr. Griswold, in his " Poets and Poetry of 
America," " the standing of Mr. Dawes is as yet unsettled ; there 
being a wide difference of opinion respecting his writings." The 
width of this difference is apparent ; and, while to many it is 
matter for wonder, to those who have the interest of our Litera- 
ture at heart, it is, more properly, a source of mortification and 
regret. That the author in question has long enjoyed what we 
term " a high poetical reputation," cannot be denied ; and in no 
manner is this point more strikingly evinced than in the choice 
of his works, some two years since, by one of our most enterpri- 
sing publishers, as the initial volume of a series, the avowed object 
of which was the setting forth, in the best array of paper, type, 
and pictorial embellishment, the elite of the American poets. As 
a writer of occasional stanzas he has been long before the public ; 
always eliciting, from a great variety of sources, unqualified com. 
mendation. "With the exception of a solitary remark, adventured 
by ourselves in " A Chapter on Autography," there has been no 
written dissent from the universal opinion in his favor — the uni- 
versal apparent opinion. Mr. Griswold's observation must be 
understood, we presume, as referring to the conversational opinion 
upon this topic ; or it is not impossible that he holds in view the 
difference between the criticism of the newspaper paragraphs and 
the private comment of the educated and intelligent. Be this as 
it may, the rapidly growing " reputation" of our poet was much 
Vol. in.— 7 



146 RUFUS DAWES. 



enhanced by the publication of his first compositions " of length," 
and attained its climax, we believe, upon the public recitation, by 
himself, of a tragic drama, in five acts, entitled " Athenia of Da- 
mascus," to a large assembly of admiring and applauding friends, 
gathered together for the occasion in one of the halls of the Uni- 
versity of New- York. 

This popular decision, so frequent and so public, in regard to 
the poetical ability of Mr. Dawes, might be received as evidence 
of his actual merit (and by thousands it is so received) were it 
not too scandalously at variance with a species of criticism which 
will not be resisted — with the perfectly simple precepts of the 
very commonest common sense. The peculiarity of Mr. Gris- 
wold's observation has induced us to make inquiry into the true 
character of the volume to which we have before alluded, and 
which embraces, we believe, the chief portion of the published 
verse-compositions of its author.* This inquiry has but resulted 
in the confirmation of our previous opinion ; and we now hesitate 
not to say, that no man in America has been more shamefully 
over-estimated than the one who forms the subject of this article. 
We say shamefully ; for, though a better day is now dawning 
upon our literary interests, and a laudation so indiscriminate will 
never be sanctioned again — the laudation in this instance, as it 
stands upon record, must be regarded as a laughable although 
bitter satire upon the general zeal, accuracy and independence of 
that critical spirit which, but a few years ago, pervaded and de- 
graded the land. 

In what we shall say we have no intention of being profound. 
Here is a case in which anything like analysis would be utterly 
thrown away. Our purpose (which is truth) will be more fully 
answered by an unvarnished exposition of fact. It appears to us, 
indeed, that in excessive generalization lies one of the leading 
errors of a criticism employed upon a poetical literature so imma- 
ture as our own. We rhapsodize rather than discriminate ; de- 
lighting more in the dictation or discussion of a principle, than in 
its particular and methodical application. The wildest and most 

* " Geraldine," " Athenia of Damascus," and Miscellaneous Poems. By 
Rufus Dawes. Published by Samuel Colman, New- York. 



/ 



RUFITS DAWES. 147 



erratic effusion of the Muse, not utterly worthless, will be found 
more or less indebted to method for whatever of value it embo- 
dies ; and we shall discover, conversely, that, in any analysis of 
even the wildest effusion, we labor without method only to labor 
without end. There is little reason for that vagueness of com- 
ment which, of late, we so pertinaciously affect, and which has 
been brought into fashion, no doubt, through the proverbial facil- 
ity and security of merely ^general remark. In regard to the lead- 
ing principles of true poesy, these, we think, stand not at all in 
need of the elucidation hourly wasted upon them. Founded in 
the unerring instincts of our nature, they are enduring and immu- 
table. In a rigid scrutiny of any number of directly conflicting 
opinions upon a poetical topic, we will not fail to perceive that 
principles identical in every important point have been, in each 
opinion, either asserted, or intimated, or unwittingly allowed an 
influence. The differences of decision arose simply from those of 
application ; and from such variety in the applied, rather than in 
the conceived idea, sprang, undoubtedly, the absurd distinctions 
of the " schools." 

" Geraldine" is the title of the first and longest poem in the 
volume before us. It embraces some three hundred and fifty 
stanzas — the whole being a most servile imitation of the " Don 
Juan" of Lord Byron. The outrageous absurdity of the system- 
atic digression in the British original, was so managed as to form 
not a little portion of its infinite interest and humor ; and the fine 
discrimination of the writer pointed out to him a limit beyond 
which he never ventured with this tantalizing species of drollery. 
" Geraldine" may be regarded, however, as a simple embodiment 
of the whole soul of digression. It is a mere mass of irrelevancy, 
amid the mad farrago of which we detect with difficulty even the 
faintest vestige of a narrative, and where the continuous lapse 
from impertinence to impertinence is seldom justified by any 
shadow of appositeness or even of the commonest relation. 

To afford the reader any proper conception of the story, is of 
course a matter of difficulty ; we must content ourselves with a 
mere outline of the general conduct. This we shall endeavor to 
give without indulgence in those feelings of risibility stirred up in 
us by the primitive perusal. We shall rigorously avoid every 



US RUFUS DAWES. 



species of exaggeration, and confine ourselves, with perfect hon- 
esty, to the conveyance of a distinct image. 

" Geraldine," then, opens with some four or five stanzas descrip- 
tive of a sylvan scene in America. We could, perhaps, render 
Mr. Dawes' poetical reputation no greater service than by the 
quotation of these simple verses in full. 

I know a spot where poets fain would dwell, 
To gather flowers and food for after thought, 

As bees draw honey from the rose's cell, 
To hive among the treasures they have wrought ; 

And there a cottage from a sylvan screen 

Sent up a curling smoke amidst the green. 

Around that hermit home of quietude 

The elm trees whispered with the summer air, 

And nothing ever ventured to intrude 

But happy birds that caroled wildly there, 

Or honey-laden harvesters that flew 

Humming away to drink the morning dew. 

Around the door the honey-suckle climbed 
And Multa-flora spread her countless roses, 

And never poet sang nor minstrel rhymed 
Romantic scene where happiness reposes, 

Sweeter to sense than that enchanting dell 

Where home-sick memory fondly loves to dwell. 

Beneath the mountain's brow the cottage stood, 
Hard by a shelving lake whose pebbled bed 

Was skirted by the drapery of a wood 
That hung its festoon foliage over head, 

Where wild deer came at eve unharmed, to drink, 
While moonlight threw then* shadows from the brink. 

The green earth heaved her giant waves around, 
Where, through the mountain vista, one vast height 

Towered heavenward without peer, his forehead bound 
With gorgeous clouds, at times of changeful light, 

While, far below, the lake in bridal rest 

Slept with his glorious picture on her breast. 

Here is an air of quietude in good keeping with the theme ; 
the " giant waves" in the last stanzas redeem it from much excep- 
tion otherwise ; and perhaps we need say nothing at all of the 
suspicious-looking compound " multa-flora." Had Mr. Dawes 
always written even nearly so well, we should have been spared 
to-day the painful task imposed upon us by a stern sense of our 
critical duty. These passages are followed immediately by an 



I 



RUFUS DAWES. 149 



address or invocation to " Peerless America," including apostro- 
phes to Allston and Claude Lorraine. 

We now learn the name of the tenant of the cottage, which is 
Wilton, and ascertain that he has an only daughter. A single 
stanza quoted at this juncture will aid the reader's conception of 
the queer tone of philosophical rhapsody with which the poem 
teems, and some specimen of which is invariably made to follow 
each little modicum of incident. 

How like the heart is to an instrument 

A touch can wake to gladness or to wo ! 
How like the circumambient element 

The spirit with its undulating flow ! 
The heart — the soul — Oh, Mother Nature, why 
This universal bond of sympathy. . 

After two pages much in this manner, we are told that Geral 
dine is the name of the maiden, and are informed, with compara- 
tively little circumlocution, of her character. She is beautiful, and 
kind-hearted, and somewhat romantic, and " some thought her 
reason touched" — for which we have little disposition to blame 
them. There is now much about Kant and Fichte ; about Schel- 
ling, Hegel and Cousin ; (which latter is made to rhyme with 
gang ;) about Milton, Byron, Homer, Spinoza, David Hume, and 
Mirabeau ; and a good deal, too, about the scribendi cacoethes, in 
which an evident misunderstanding of the quantity of cacoethes 
brings, again, into very disagreeable suspicion the writer's cogni- 
zance of the Latin tongue. At this point we may refer, also, to 
such absurdities as 

Truth with her thousand-folded robe of error 
Close shut in her sarcophagi of terror — 

And 

Where candelabri silver the white halls. 

Now, no one is presupposed to be cognizant of any language be- 
yond his own ; to be ignorant of Latin is no crime ; to pretend a 
knowledge is beneath contempt ; and the pretender will attempt 
in vain to utter or to write two consecutive phrases of a foreign 
idiom, without betraying his deficiency to those who are con- 
versant. 

At page 39, there is some prospect of a progress in the story. 



150 RUFUS DAWES. 



Here we are introduced to a Mr. Acus and his fair daughter, Miss 

Alice. 

Acus had been a dashing Bond-street tailor 

Some few short years before, who took his measures 

So carefully he always cut the jailor 

And filled his coffers with exhaustless treasures ; 

Then with his wife, a son, and three fair daughters, 

He sunk the goose and straightway crossed the waters. 

His residence is in the immediate vicinity of Wilton. The 
daughter, Miss Alice, who is said to be quite a belle, is enamored 
of one Waldron, a foreigner, a lion, and a gentleman of question- 
able reputation. His character (which for our life and soul we 
cannot comprehend) is given within the space of some forty or 
fifty stanzas, made to include, at the same time, an essay on mo- 
tives, deduced from the text " whatever is must be," and illumi- 
nated by a long note at the end of the poem, wherein the systime 
(quere systeme ?) de la Nature is sturdily attacked. Let us speak 
the truth : this note (and the whole of them, for there are many,) 
may be regarded as a glorious specimen of the concentrated es- 
sence of rigmarole, and, to say nothing of their utter absurdity 
per se, are so ludicrously uncalled for, and grotesquely out of 
place, that we found it impossible to refrain, during their perusal, 
from a most unbecoming and uproarious guffaw. We will be 
pardoned for giving a specimen — selecting it for its brevity. 

Reason, he deemed, could measure everything, 
And reason told him that there was a law 

Of mental action which must ever fling 
A death-bolt at all faith, and this he saw 

"Was Transference. (14) 

Turning to Note 14, we read thus — 

" If any one has a curiosity to look into this subject, (does Mr. 
Dawes really think any one so great a fool ?) and wishes to see 
how far the force of reasoning and analysis may carry him, inde- 
pendently of revelation, I would suggest (thank you, sir,) such 
inquiries as the following : 

" Whether the first Philosophy, considered in relation to Phy- 
sics, was first in time ? 

" How far our moral perceptions have been influenced by natu- 
ral phenomena? 

"How far our metaphysical notions of cause and effect are 






RUFUS DAWES. 151 



attributable to the transference of notions connected with logical 
language V 

And all this in a poem about Acus, a tailor ! 
Waldron prefers, unhappily, Geraldine to Alice, and Geraldine 
returns his love, exciting thus the deep indignation of the neglect- 
ed fair one, 

whom love and jealousy bear up 
To mingle poison in her rival's cup. 

Miss A. has among her adorers one of the genus loafer, whose 

appellation, not improperly, is Bore. B. is acquainted with a 

milliner — the milliner of the disconsolate lady. 

She made this milliner her friend, who swore, 
To work her full revenge through Mr. Bore. 

And now says the poet — 

I leave your sympathetic fancies, 
To fill the outline of this pencil sketch. 

This filling has been, with us at least, a matter of no little dif- 
culty. We believe, however, that the affair is intended to run 
thus : — Waldron is enticed to some vile sins by Bore, and the 
knowledge of these, on the part of Alice, places the former gen- 
tleman in her power. 

We are now introduced to a fete champetre at the residence of 
Acus, who, by the way, has a son, Clifford, a suitor to Geraldine 
with the approbation of her father — that good old gentleman, for 
whom our sympathies were excited in the beginning of things, 
being influenced by the consideration that this. scion of the house 
of the tailor will inherit a plum. The worst of the whole is, how- 
ever, that the romantic Geraldine, who should have known bet- 
ter, and who loves Waldron, loves also the young knight of the 
shears. The consequence is a rencontre of the rival suitors at the 
fete champetre ; Waldron knocking his antagonist on the head, 
and throwing him into the lake. The murderer, as well as we 
can make out the narrative, now joins a piratical band, among 
whom he alternately cuts throats and sings songs of his own com- 
position. In the mean time the deserted Geraldine mourns alone, 
till, upon a certain day, 

A shape stood by her like a thing of air — 
She started — Waldron's haggard face was there. 



152 RUFUS DAWES. 



He laid her gently down, of sense bereft, 

And sunk his picture on her bosom's snow, 
And close beside these lines in blood he left : 

" Farewell forever, Geraldine, I go 
Another woman's victim — dare I tell ? 
Tis Alice ! — curse us, Geraldine ! — farewell !" 

There is no possibility of denying the fact : this is a droll piece 
of business. The lover brings forth a miniature, (Mr. Dawes has 
a passion for miniatures,) sinks it in the bosom of the lady, cuts 
his finger, and writes with the blood an epistle, (ivhere is not spe- 
cified, but we presume he indites it upon the bosom as it is " close 
beside" the picture,) in which epistle he announces that he is 
" another woman's victim," giving us to understand that he him- 
self is a woman after all, and concluding with the delicious bit of 
Billingsgate 

dare I tell? 
'Tis Alice ! — curse us, Geraldine ! — farewell ! 

We suppose, however, that " curse us" is a misprint ; for why- 
should Geraldine curse both herself and her lover? — it should 
have been " curse it !" no doubt. The whole passage, perhaps, 
would have read better thus — 

oh, my eye ! 
'Tis Alice ! — d — n it, Geraldine ! — good bye ! 

The remainder of the narrative may be briefly summed up. 
Waldron returns to his professional engagements with the pirates, 
while Geraldine, attended by her father, goes to sea for the bene- 
fit of her health. The consequence is inevitable. The vessels of 
the separated lovers meet and engage in the most diabolical of 
conflicts. Both are blown all to pieces. In a boat from one ves- 
sel, Waldron escapes — in a boat from the other, the lady Geral- 
dine. Now, as a second natural consequence, the parties meet 
again — Destiny is every thing in such cases. Well, the parties 
meet again. The lady Geraldine has " that miniature" about her 
neck, and the circumstance proves too much for the excited state 
of mind of Mr. Waldron. He just seizes her ladyship, therefore, 
by the small of the waist and incontinently leaps with her into 
the sea. 

However intolerably absurd this skeleton of the story may ap- 
pear, a thorough perusal will convince the reader that the entire 



RUFUS DAWES. 153 



fabric is even more so. It is impossible to convey, in any such 
digest as we have given, a full idea of the niaiseries with which 
the narrative abounds. An utter want of keeping is especially 
manifest throughout. In the most solemnly serious passages we 
have, for example, incidents of the world of 1839, jumbled up 
with the distorted mythology of the Greeks. Our conclusion of 
the drama, as we just gave it, was perhaps ludicrous enough; but 
how much more preposterous does it appear in the grave language 
of the poet himself! 

And round her neck the miniature was hung 
Of him who gazed with Hell's unmingled wo ; 

He saw her, kissed her cheek, and wildly flung 
His arms around her with a mad'ning throw — 

Then plunged within the cold unfathomed deep 

While sirens sang their victim to his sleep ! 

Only think of a group of sirens singing to sleep a modern " mini- 
atured" flirt, kicking about in the water with a New York dandy 
in tight pantaloons ! 

But not even these stupidities would suffice to justify a total 
condemnation of the poetry of Mr. Dawes. We have known fol- 
lies very similar committed by men of real ability, and have been 
induced to disregard them in earnest admiration of the brilliancy 
of the minor beauty of style. Simplicity, perspicuity and vigor, 
or a well-disciplined ornateness of language, have done wonders 
for the reputation of many a writer really deficient in the higher 
and more essential qualities of the Muse. But upon these minor 
points of manner our poet has not even the shadow of a shadow 
to sustain him. His works, in this respect, may be regarded as 
a theatrical world of mere verbiage, somewhat speciously bediz- 
zened with a tinselly meaning well adapted to the eyes of the rab- 
ble. There is not a page of anything that he has written which 
will bear, for an instant, the scrutiny of a critical eye. Exceed- 
ingly fond of the glitter of metaphor, he has not the capacity to 
manage it, and, in the awkward attempt, jumbles together the 
most incongruous of ornament. Let us take any passage of " Ge- 
raldine" by way of exemplification. 



-Thy rivers swell the sea- 



In one eternal diapason pour 

Thy cataracts the hymn of liberty, 

Teaching the clouds to thunder. 

7* 



154 RUFUS DAWES. 



Here we have cataracts teaching clouds to thunder — and how? 

By means of a hymn. 

Why should chromatic discord charm the ear 

And smiles and tears stream o'er with troubled joy ? 

Tears may stream over, but not smiles. 

Then comes the breathing time of young Romance, 
The June of life, when summer's earliest ray 

Warms the red arteries, that bound and dance 
With soft voluptuous impulses at play, 

While the full heart sends forth as from a hive 
A thousand winged messengers alive. 

Let us reduce this to a simple statement, and we have — what ? 
The earliest ray of summer warming red arteries, which are bound- 
ing and dancing, and playing with a parcel of urchins, called vo- 
luptuous impulses, while the bee-hive of a heart attached to these 
dancing arteries is at the same time sending forth a swarm of its 
innocent little inhabitants. 

The eyes were like the sapphire of deep air, 
The garb that distance robes elysium in, 

But oh, so much of heaven lingered there 
The wayward heart forgot its blissful sin 

And worshipped all Religion well forbids 

Beneath the silken fringes of their lids. 

That distance is not the cause of the sapphire of the sky, is not 
to our present purpose. We wish merely to call attention to the 
verbiage of the stanza. It is impossible to put the latter portion 
of it into any thing like intelligible prose. So much of heaven 
lingered in the lady's eyes that the wayward heart forgot its bliss- 
ful sin, and worshiped everything which religion forbids, beneath 
the silken fringes of the lady's eyelids. This we cannot be com- 
pelled to understand, and shall therefore say nothing further 
about it. 

She loved to lend Imagination wing 

And link her heart with Juliet's in a dream, 
And feel the music of a sister string 

That thrilled the current of her vital stream. 

How delightful a picture we have here ! A lady is lending one 
of her wings to the spirit, or genius, called Imagination, who, of 
course, has lost one of his own. While thus employed with one 
hand, with the other she is chaining her heart to the heart of the 
fair Juliet. At the same time she is feeling the music of a sister 
string, and this string is thrilling the current of the lady's vital 



RUFUS DAWES. 155 



stream. If this is downright nonsense we cannot be held respon- 
sible for its perpetration ; it is but the downright nonsense of Mr. 
Dawes. 
Again — 

Without the Palinurus of self-science 

Byron embarked upon the stormy sea, 
To adverse breezes hurling his defiance 

And dashing up the rainbows on his lee, 
And chasing those he made in wildest mirth, 
Or sending back their images to earth. 

This stanza we have more than once seen quoted as a fine spe- 
cimen of the poetical powers of our author. His lordship, no 
doubt, is herein made to cut a very remarkable figure. Let us 
imagine him, for one moment, embarked upon a stormy sea, hurl- 
ing his defiance, (literally throwing his gauntlet or glove,) to the 
adverse breezes, dashing up rainbows on his lee, laughing at them, 
and chasing them at the same time, and, in conclusion, " sending 
back their images to earth." But we have already wearied the 
reader with this abominable rigmarole. We shall be pardoned, 
(after the many specimens thus given at random,) for not carrying 
out the design we originally intended : that of commenting upon 
two or three successive pages of " Geraldine" with a view of 
showing, (in a spirit apparently more fair than that of particular 
selection,) the entireness with which the whole poem is pervaded 
by unintelligibility. To every thinking mind, however, this would 
seem a work of supererogation. In such matters, by such under- 
standings, the brick of the skolastikos will be received implicitly 
as a sample of the house. The writer capable, to any extent, of 
such absurdity as we have pointed out, cannot, by any possibility, 
produce a long article worth reading. We say this in the very 
teeth of the magnificent assembly which listened to the recital of 
Mr. Dawes, in the great hall of the University of New York. We 
shall leave " Athenia of Damascus," without comment, to the de- 
cision of those who may find time and temper for its perusal, and 
conclude our extracts by a quotation, from among the minor 
poems, of the following very respectable 

ANACREONTIC. 

Fill again the mantling bowl 

Nor fear to meet the morning breaking ! 



156 RUFUS DAWES. 



None but slaves should bend the soul 

Beneath the chains of mortal making : 
Fill your beakers to the brim, 

Bacchus soon shall lull your sorrow ; 
Let delight 
But crown the night, 
And care may bring her clouds to-morrow. 

Mark this cup of rosy wine 

With virgin pureness deeply blushing ; 
Beauty pressed it from the vine 

While Love stood by to charm its gushing ; 
He who dares to drain it now 

Shall drink such bliss as seldom gladdens ; 
The Moslem's dream 
Would joyless seem 
To him whose brain its rapture maddens. 

Pleasure sparkles on the brim — 

Lethe lies far deeper in it — 
Both, enticing, wait for him 

Whose heart is warm enough to win it ; 
Hearts like ours, if e'er they chill 
Soon with love again must lighten. 
Skies may wear 
A darksome air 
Where sunshine most is known to brighten. 

Then fill, fill high the mantling bowl ! 

Nor fear to meet the morning breaking ; 
Care shall never cloud the soul 

While Beauty's beaming eyes are waking. 
Fill your beakers to the brim, 

Bacchus soon shall lull your sorrow ; 
Let delight 
But crown the night, 
And care may bring her clouds to-morrow. 

Whatever shall be, hereafter, the position of Mr. Dawes in the 

poetical world, he will be indebted for it altogether to his shorter 

compositions, some of which have the merit of tenderness ; others 

of melody and force. What seems to be the popular opinion in 

respect to his more voluminous effusions, has been brought about, 

in some measure, by a certain general tact, nearly amounting to 

taste, and more nearly the converse of talent. This tact has been 

especially displayed in the choice of not inelegant titles and other 

externals; in a peculiar imitative speciousness of manner, pervading 

the surface of his writings ; and, (here we have the anomaly of 

a positive benefit deduced from a radical defect,) in an absolute 

deficiency in basis, in stamen, in matter, or pungency, which, if 

even slightly evinced, might have invited the reader to an inti- 



i 



FLACCUS.— MR. WARD. 157 

mate and understanding perusal, whose result would have been 
disgust. His poems have not been condemned, only because they 
have never been read. The glitter upon the surface has sufficed, 
with the newspaper critic, to justify his hyperboles of praise. 
Very few persons, we feel assured, have had sufficient nerve to 
wade through the entire volume now in question, except, as in 
our own case, with the single object of criticism in view. Mr. 
Dawes has, also, been aided to a poetical reputation by the ami- 
ability of his character as a man. How efficient such causes have 
before been in producing such effects, is a point but too thorough- 
ly understood. 

We have already spoken of the numerous friends of the poet; 
and we shall not here insist upon the fact, that we bear him no 
personal ill-will. With those who know us, such a declaration 
would appear supererogatory ; and by those who know us not, it 
would, doubtless, be received with incredulity. What we have 
said, however, is not in opposition to Mr. Dawes, nor even so 
much in opposition to the poems of Mr. Dawes, as in defence of 
the many true souls which, in Mr. Dawes' apotheosis, are aggrieved. 
The laudation of the unworthy is to the worthy the most bitter 
of all wrong. But it is unbecoming in him who merely demon- 
strates a truth, to offer reason or apology for the demonstration. 



FLACCUS. -THOMAS WARD. 

The poet now comprehended in the cognomen Flaccus, is by no 
means our ancient friend Quintus Horatius, nor even his ghost, 

but merely a Mr. Ward, of Gotham, once a contributor to 

the New York " American," and to the New York " Knicker- 
bocker " Magazine. He is characterized by Mr. Griswold, in his 
" Poets and Poetry of America," as a gentleman of elegant 
leisure. 

What there is in " elegant leisure " so much at war with the 
divine afflatus, it is not very difficult, but quite unnecessary, to 
say. The fact has been long apparent. Never sing the Nine so 
well as when penniless. The mens divinior is one thing, and the 
otium cum dignitate quite another. 



158 FLACCUS.— MR. WARD. 

Of course Mr. Ward is not, as a poet, altogether destitute of 
merit. If so, the public had been spared these paragraphs. But 
the sum of his deserts has been footed up by a clique who are in 
the habit of reckoning units as tens in all cases where champagne 
and " elegant leisure " are concerned. We do not consider him, 
at all points, a Pop Emmons, but, with deference to the more 
matured opinions of the " Knickerbocker/' we may be permitted 
to entertain a doubt whether he is either Jupiter Tonans, or Phoe- 
bus Apollo. 

Justice is not, at all times, to all persons, the most desirable 
thing in the world, but then there is the old adage about the 
tumbling of the heavens, and simple justice is all that we propose 
in the case of Mr. Ward. We have no design to be bitter. We 
notice his book at all, only because it is an unusually large one of 
its kind, because it is here lying upon our table, and because, 
whether justly or unjustly, whether for good reason or for none, 
it has attracted some portion of the attention of the public. 

The volume is entitled, somewhat affectedly, " Passaic, a Group 
of Poems touching that river : with Other Musings, by Flaccus," 
and embodies, we believe, all the previously published effusions 
of its author. It commences with a very pretty " Sonnet to Pas- 
saic," and from the second poem, "Introductory Musings on 
Rivers," we are happy in being able to quote an entire page of 
even remarkable beauty. 

Beautiful Rivers ! that adown the vale 
With graceful passage journey to the deep, 
Let me along your grassy marge recline 
At ease, and, musing, meditate the strange 
Bright history of your life ; yes, from your birth 
Has beauty's shadow chased your every step : 
The blue sea was your mother, and the sun 
Your glorious sire, clouds your voluptuous cradle, 
Roofed with o'erarching rainbows ; and your fall 
To earth was cheered with shouts of happy birds, 
With brightened faces of reviving flowers, 
And meadows, while the sympathizing west 
Took holiday, and donn'd her richest robes. 
From deep mysterious wanderings your springs 
Break bubbling into beauty ; where they lie 
In infant helplessness awhile, but soon 
Gathering in tiny brooks, they gambol down 
The steep sides of the mountain, laughing, shouting, 
Teasing the wild flowers, and at every turn 



1 



FLACCUS.— MR. WARD. 159 

Meeting new playmates still to swell their ranks ; 
Which, with the rich increase resistless grown, 
Shed foam and thunder, that the echoing wood 
Rings with the boisterous glee ; while, o'er their heads, 
Catching their spirit blithe, young rainbows sport, 
The frolic children of the wanton sun. 

Nor is your swelling prime, or green old age, 
Though calm, unlovely ; still, where'er ye move, 
Your train is beauty ; trees stand grouping by, 
To mark your graceful progress ; giddy flowers 
And vain, as beauties wont, stoop o'er the verge 
To greet their faces in your flattering glass ; 
The thirsty herd are following at your side ; 
And water-birds in clustering fleets convoy 
Your sea-bound tides ; and jaded man, released 
From worldly thraldom, here his dwelling plants — 
Here pauses in your pleasant neighborhood, 
Sure of repose along your tranquil shores ; 
And, when your end approaches, and ye blend 
With the eternal ocean, ye shall fade 
As placidly as when an infant dies, 
And the Death-Angel shall your powers withdraw 
Gently as twilight takes the parting day, 
And, with a soft and gradual decline 
That cheats the senses, lets it down to night. 

There is nothing very original in all this ; the general idea is, 
perhaps, the most absolutely trite in poetical literature ; but the 
theme is not the less just on this account, while we must confess 
that it is admirably handled. The picture embodied in the whole 
of the concluding paragraph is perfect. The seven final lines 
convey not only a novel but a highly appropriate and beautiful 
image. 

What follows, of this poem, however, is by no means worthy 
so fine a beginning. Instead of confining himself to the true 
poetical thesis, the Beauty or the Sublimity of river scenery, he 
descends into mere meteorology — into the uses and general phi- 
losophy of rain, &c. — matters which should be left to Mr. Espy, 
who knows something about them, as we are sorry to say Mr. 
Flaccus does not. 

The second and chief poem in the volume, is entitled " The 
Great Descender." We emphasize the " poem " merely by way 
of suggesting that the " Great Descender " is anything else. We 
never could understand what pleasure men of talent can take in 
concocting elaborate doggerel of this order. Least of all can we 
comprehend why, having perpetrated the atrocity, they should 



160 FLACCUS.— MR. WARD. 

place it at the door of the Muse. We are at a loss to know by 
what right, human or divine, twattle of this character is intruded 
into a collection of what professes to be Poetry. We put it to 
Mr. Ward, in all earnestness, if the " Great Descender," which is 
a history of Sam Patch, has a single attribute, beyond that of 
mere versification, in common with what even Sam Patch himself 
would have had the hardihood to denominate a poem. 

Let us call this thing a rhymed jeu d 'esprit, a burlesque, or 
what not ? — and, even so called, and judged by its new name, we 
must still regard it as a failure. Even in the loosest compositions 
we demand a certain degree of keeping. But in the " Great De- 
scender " none is apparent. The tone is unsteady — fluctuating 
between the grave and the gay — and never being precisely either. 
Thus there is a failure in both. The intention being never rightly 
taken, we are, of course, never exactly in condition either to weep 
or to laugh. 

We do not pretend to be the Oracles of Dodona, but it does 
really appear to us that Mr. Flaccus intended the whole matter, 
in the first instance, as a solemnly serious thing ; and that, having 
composed it in a grave vein, he became apprehensive of its ex- 
citing derision, and so interwove sundry touches of the burlesque, 
behind whose equivocal aspect, he might shelter himself at need. 
In no other supposition can we reconcile the spotty appearance 
of the whole with a belief in the sanity of the author. It is 
difficult, also, in any other view of the case, to appreciate the air 
of positive gravity with which he descants upon the advantages 
to Science which have accrued from a man's making a frog of 
himself. Mr. Ward is frequently pleased to denominate Mr. 
Patch " a martyr of science," and appears very doggedly in earn- 
est in all passages such as the following : 

Through the glad Heavens, which tempests now conceal, 

Deep thunder-guns in quick succession peal, 

As if salutes were firing from the sky, 

To hail the triumph and the victory. 

Shout ! trump of Fame, till thy brass lungs burst out ! 

Shout ! mortal tongues ! deep-throated thunders, shout ! 

For lo ! electric genius, downward hurled, 

Has startled Science, and illumed the world ! 

That Mr. Patch was a genius we do not doubt ; so is Mr. Ward ; 



FLACCUS.— MR. WARD. 161 

but the science displayed in jumping down the Falls, is a point 
above us. There might have been some science in jumping up. 

" The Worth of Beauty ; or a Lover's Journal," is the title of 
the poem next in place and importance. Of this composition 
Mr. W. thus speaks in a Note : " The individual to whom the 
present poem relates, and who had suffered severely all the pains 
and penalties which arise from the want of those personal charms 
so much admired by him in others, gave the author, many years 
since, some fragments of a journal kept in his early days, in 
which he had bared his heart, and set down all his thoughts and 
feelings. This prose journal has here been transplanted into the 
richer soil of verse." 

The narrative of the friend of Mr. Flaccus must, originally, 
have been a very good thing. By " originally," we mean before 
it had the misfortune to be " transplanted in the richer soil of 
verse" — which has by no means agreed with its constitution. 
But, even through the dense fog of our author's rhythm, we can 
get an occasional glimpse of its merit. It must have been the 
work of a heart on fire with passion, and the utter abandon of 
the details, reminds us even of Jean Jacques. But alas for this 
"richer soil !" Can we venture to present our readers with, a 
specimen ? 

Now roses blush, and violets' eyes, 

And seas reflect the glance of skies ; 

And now that frolic pencil streaks 

With quaintest tints the tulips' cheeks ; 

Now jewels bloom in secret worth, 

Like blossoms of the inner earth ; 

Now painted birds are pouring round 

The beauty and the wealth of sound ; 

Now sea-shells glance with quivering ray, 

Too rare to seize, too fleet to stay, 

And hues out-dazzling all the rest 

Are dashed profusely on the west, 

While rainbows seem to palettes changed, 

Whereon the motley tints are ranged. 

But soft the moon t fiat pencil tipped, 

As though, in liquid radiance dipped, 

A likeness of the sun it drew, 

But flattered him with pearlier hue ; 

Which haply spilhng runs astray, 

And blots with light the milky way ; 

While stars besprinkle all the air. 

Like spatterings of that pencil there. 



162 FLACCUS.— MR. WARD. 

All this by way of exalting the subject. The moon is made a 
painter, and the rainbow a palette. And the moon has a pencil 
(that pencil !) which she dips, by way of a brush, in the liquid 
radiance (the colors on a palette are not liquid,) and then draws 
(not paints) a likeness of the sun ; but, in the attempt, plasters 
him too " pearly," puts it on too thick ; the consequence of which 
is that some of the paint is spilt, and " runs astray " and besmears 
the milky way, and " spatters " the rest of the sky with stars ! 
We can only say that a very singular picture was spoilt in the 
making. 

The versification of the " Worth of Beauty " proceeds much 

after this fashion ; we select a fair example of the whole from 

page 43. 

Yes ! pangs have cut my soul with grief 
So keen that gashes were relief, 
And racks have rung my spirit-frame 
To which the strain of joints were tame 
And battle strife itself were nought 
Beside the inner fight I've fought, etc., etc. 

Nor do we regard any portion of it (so far as rhythm is con- 
cerned) as at all comparable to some of the better ditties of Wil- 
liam Slater. Here, for example, from his Psalms, published in 

1642: 

The righteous shall his sorrow scan 

And laugh at him, and say " behold 
What hath become of this here man 

That on his riches was so bold." 

And here, again, are lines from the edition of the same Psalms, 
by Archbishop Parker, which we most decidedly prefer : 
Who sticketh to God in sable trust 
As Sion's mount he stands full just, 
Which moveth no whit nor yet can reel, 
But standeth forever as stiff as steel. 

"The Martyr" and the " Retreat of Seventy-Six" are merely 
Revolutionary incidents " done into verse," and spoilt in the do- 
ing. " The Retreat " begins with the remarkable line, 

Tramp ! tramp ! tramp ! tramp ! 
which is elsewhere introduced into the poem. We look in vain, 
here, for anything worth even qualified commendation. 

" The Diary " is a record of events occurring to the author 
during a voyage from New York to Havre. Of these events a 
fit of sea-sickness is the chief. Mr. Ward, we believe, is the first 



FLACCUS.— MR. WARD. 163 

of the genus irritabile who has ventured to treat so delicate a 
subject with that grave dignity which is its due : 

Rejoice ! rejoice ! already on my sight 

Bright shores, gray towers, and coming wonders reel ; 

My brain grows giddy — is it with delight ? 
A swimming faintness, such as one might feel 

When stabbed and dying, gathers on my sense — 

It weighs me down — and now — help ! — horror ! — 

But the " horror," and indeed all that ensues, we must leave to 
the fancy of the poetical. 

Some pieces entitled " Humorous " next succeed, and one or 
two of them (for example, " The Graham System " and " The 
Bachelor's Lament ") are not so very contemptible in their way, 
but the way itself is beneath even contempt. 

" To an Infant in Heaven " embodies some striking thoughts ? 
and, although feeble as a whole, and terminating lamely, may be 
cited as the best composition in the volume. We quote two or 
three of the opening stanzas : 

Thou bright and star-like spirit ! 

That in my visions wild 
I see 'mid heaven's seraphic host — 

Oh ! canst thou be my child ? 

My grief is quenched in wonder, 

And pride arrests my sighs ; 
A branch from this unworthy stock 

Now blossoms in the skies. 

Our hopes of thee were lofty, 

But have we cause to grieve ? 
Oh ! could our fondest, proudest wish 

A nobler fate conceive ? 

The little weeper tearless 1 

The sinner snatched from sin ! 
The babe to more than manhood grown, 

Ere childhood did begin 1 

And I, thy earthly teacher, 

Would blush thy powers to see ! 
Thou art to me a parent now, 

And I a child to thee ! 

There are several other pieces in the book — but it is needless 
to speak of them in detail. Among them we note one or two 
political effusions, and one or two which are (satirically ?) termed 
satirical. All are worthless. 

Mr. Ward's imagery, at detached points, has occasional vigor 
and appropriateness ; we may go so far as to say that, at times, 



164 FLACCUS.— MR. WARD. 

it is strikingly beautiful — by accident of course. Let us cite a 

few instances. At page 53 we read — 

O ! happy day ! — earth, sky is fair, 
And fragrance floats along the air ; 
For all the bloomy orchards glow 
As with a fall of rosy snow. 



At page 91- 
At page 92- 



How flashed the overloaded flowers 
With gems, a present from the showers ! 

No ! there is danger ; all the night 

I saw her like a starry light 

More lovely in my visions lone 

Than in my day-dreams truth she shone. 

'T is naught when on the sun we gaze 

If only dazzled by his rays, 

But when our eyes his form retain 

Some wound to vision must remain. 

And again, at page 234, speaking of a slight shock of an 

earthquake, the earth is said to tremble 

As if some wing of passing angel, bound 

From sphere to sphere, had brushed the golden chain 

That hangs our planet to the throne of God. 

This latter passage, however, is, perhaps, not altogether original 

with Mr. Ward. In a poem now lying before us, entitled " Al 

Aaraaf,'' the composition of a gentleman of Philadelphia, we find 

what follows : 

A dome by link'd light from heaven let down 

Sat gently on these columns as a crown ; 

A window of one circular diamond there 

Looked out above into the purple air, 

And rays from God shot down that meteor chain 

And hallow'd all the beauty twice again, 

Save when, between th' Empyrean and that ring, 

Some eager spirit flapped his dusky wing. 

But if Mr. Ward's imagery is, indeed, at rare intervals, good, 
it must be granted, on the other hand, that, in general, it is atro- 
ciously inappropriate, or low. For example : 

Thou gaping chasm ! whose wide devouring throat 

Swallows a river, while the gulping note 

Of monstrous deglutition gurgles loud, etc. Page 24. 

Bright Beauty ! child of starry birth, 

The grace, the gem, the flower of earth, 

The damask livery of Heaven ! Page 44. 

Here the mind wavers between gems, and stars, and taffety — 
between footmen and flowers. Again, at page 46 — 



FLACCUS.— MR. WARD. 165 

All thornless flowers of wit, all chaste 
And delicate essays of taste, 
All playful fancies, winged wiles, 
That from their pinions scatter smiles, 
All prompt resource in stress or pain, 
Leap ready-armed from woman's brain. 

The idea of " thornless flowers," etc., leaping " ready-armed " 
could have entered few brains except those of Mr. Ward. 

Of the most ineffable bad taste we have instances without num- 
ber. For example — page 183 — 

And, straining, fastens on her lips a kiss 

That seemed to suck the life-blood from her heart ! 

And here, very gravely, at page 25 — 

Again he's rous'd, first cramming in his cheek 

The weed, though vile, that props the nerves when weak. 

Here again, at page 33 — 

Full well he knew where food does not refresh, 
The shrivel'd soul sinks inward with the flesh — 
That he's best armed for danger's rash career, 
Who's crammed so full there is no room for fear. 

But we doubt if the whole world of literature, poetical or pro- 
saic, can afford a picture more utterly disgusting than the follow- 
ing, which we quote from page 177 : 

But most of all good eating cheers the brain, 
Where other joys are rarely met — at sea — 

Unless, indeed, we lose as soon as gain — 
Ay, there's the rub, so baffling oft to me. 

Boiled, roast, and baked — what precious choice of dishes 
My generous throat has shared among the fishes ! 

'T is sweet to leave, in .each forsaken spot, 

Our foot-prints there — if only in the sand ; 
'T is sweet to feel we are not all forgot, 

That some will weep our flight from every land ; 
And sweet the knowledge, when the seas I cross, 

My briny messmates ! ye will mourn my loss. 

This passage alone should damn the book — ay, damn a dozen 
such. 

Of what may be termed the niaiseries — the sillinesses — of the 

volume, there is no end. Under this head we might quote two 

thirds of the work. For example : 

Now lightning, with convulsive spasm 
Splits heaven in many a fearful chasm 

It takes the high trees by the hair 

And, as with besoms, sweeps the air. .... 



166 FLACCUS.— MR. WARD. 

Now breaks the gloom and through the chinks 
The moon, in search of opening, winks — 

All seriously urged, at different points of page 66. Again, on the 

very next page — 

Bees buzzed and wrens that throng'd the rushes 
Poured round incessant twittering gushes. 

And here, at page 129 — 

And now he leads her to the slippery brink 

Where ponderous tides headlong plunge down the horrid chink. 

And here, page 109 — 

And, like a ravenous vulture, peck 
The smoothness of that cheek and neck. 

And here, page 111 — 

While through the skin worms wriggling broke. 
And here, page 170 — 

And ride the skittish backs of untamed waves. 

And here, page 214 — 

Now clasps its mate in holy prayer 
Or tivangs a harp of gold. 

Mr. Ward, also, is constantly talking about " thunder-guns," 
" thunder-trumpets," and " thunder-shrieks." He has a bad hab- 
it, too, of styling an eye " a weeper," as for example, at page 208 — 

Oh, curl in smiles that mouth again 
And wipe that weeper dry. 

Somewhere else he calls two tears " two sparklers" — very much 
in the style of Mr. Richard Swiveller, who was fond of denomi- 
nating Madeira " the rosy." " In the nick," meaning in the height, 
or fulness, is likewise a pet expression of the author of " The Great 
Descender." Speaking of American forests, at page 286, for in- 
stance, he says, " let the doubter walk through them in the nick 
of their glory." A phrase which may be considered as in the 
very nick of good taste. 

We cannot pause to comment upon Mr. Ward's most extraor- 
dinary system of versification. Is it his own ? He has quite an 
original way of conglomerating consonants, and seems to have 
been experimenting whether it were not possible to do altogether 
without vowels. Sometimes he strings together quite a chain of 
impossibilities. The line, for example, at page 51, 

Or, only such as sea-shells flash, 
puts us much in mind of the schoolboy stumbling-block, begin- 



WILLIAM W. LORD. 167 



ning, " The cat ran up the ladder with a lump of raw liver in her 
mouth," and we defy Sam Patch himself to pronounce it twice in 
succession without tumbling into a blunder. 

But we are fairly wearied with this absurd theme. Who calls 
Mr. Ward a poet ? He is a second-rate, or a third-rate, or per- 
haps a ninety-ninth-rate poetaster. He is a gentleman of " ele- 
gant leisure," and gentlemen of elegant leisure are, for the most 
part, neither men, women, nor Harriet Martineaus. Similar opin- 
ions, we believe, were expressed by somebody else — was it Mr. 
Benjamin ? — no very long while ago. But neither Mr. Ward nor 
"The Knickerbocker" would be convinced. The latter, by way 
of defence, went into a treatise upon Sam Patch, and Mr. Ward, 
" in the nick of his glory," wrote another poem against criticism 
in general, in which he called Mr. Benjamin " a wasp" and " an 
owl," and endeavored to prove him an ass. An owl is a wise 
bird — especially in spectacles — still, we do not look upon Mr. Ben- 
jamin as an owl. If all are owls who disbelieve in this book, 
(which we now throw to the pigs) then the world at large cuts a 
pretty figure, indeed, and should be burnt up in April, as Mr. 
Miller desires — for it is only one immense aviary of owls. 



WILLIAM ¥. LORD.* 

Of Mr. Lord we know nothing — although we believe that he 
is a student at Princeton College — or perhaps a graduate, or per- 
haps a Professor of that institution. Of his book, lately, we have 
heard a good deal — that is to say, we have heard it announced in 
every possible variation of phrase, as " forthcoming." For several 
months past, indeed, much amusement has been occasioned in the 
various literary coteries in New York, by the pertinacity and ob- 
viousness of an attempt made by the poet's friends to get up an 
anticipatory excitement in his favor. There were multitudinous 
dark rumors of something in posse — whispered insinuations that 
the sun had at length arisen or would certaily arise — that a book 
was really in press which would revolutionize the poetical world — 

* Poems. By William W. Lord. New York : D. Appleton <fe Co. 



168 WILLIAM W. LORD. 



that the MS. had been submitted to the inspection of a junto of 
critics, whose fiat was well understood to be Fate, (Mr. Charles 
King, if we remember aright, forming one of the junto) — that the 
work had by them been approved, and its successful reception and 
illimitable glorification assured. — Mr. Longfellow, in consequence, 
countermanding an order given his publishers (Redding & Co.,) 
to issue forthwith a new threepenny edition of " The Voices of 
the Night." Suggestions of this nature, busily circulated in pri- 
vate, were, in good time, insinuated through the press, until at 
length the public expectation was as much on tiptoe as public ex- 
pectation, in America, can ever be expected to be about so small 
a matter as the issue of a volume of American poems. The climax 
of this whole effort, however, at forestalling the critical opinion, 
and by far the most injudicious portion of the procedure, was the 
publisher's announcement of the forthcoming book as " a very re- 
markable volume of poems." 

The fact is, the only remarkable things about Mr. Lord's com- 
positions, are their remarkable conceit, ignorance, impudence, 
platitude, stupidity and bombast : — we are sorry to say all this, 
but there is an old adage about the falling of the Heavens. Nor 
must we be misunderstood. We intend to wrong neither Mr. 
Lord nor our own conscience, by denying him particular merits — 
such as they are. His book is not altogether contemptible — al- 
though the conduct of his friends has innoculated nine-tenths of 
the community with the opinion that it is — but what we wish to 
say is, that " remarkable" is by no means the epithet to be applied, 
in the way of commendation, either to anything that he has yet 
done, or to anything that he may hereafter accomplish. In a 
word, while he has undoubtedly given proof of a very ordinary 
species of talent, no man whose opinion is entitled to the slightest 
respect, will admit in him any indication of genius. 

The " particular merits" to which, in the case of Mr. Lord, we 
have allusion, are merely the accidental merits of particular pas- 
sages. We say accidental — because poetical merit which is not 
simply an accident, is very sure to be found, more or less, in a 
state of diffusion throughout a poem. No man is entitled to the 
sacred name of poet, because from 160 pages of doggrel, may be 
culled a few sentences of worth. Nor would the case be in any 



WILLIAM W. LORD. 169 



respect altered, if these few sentences, or even if a few passages of 
length, were of an excellence even supreme. For a poet is neces- 
sarily a man of genius, and with the spirit of true genius even its 
veriest common-places are intertwined and inextricably intertan- 
gled. When, therefore, amid a Sahara of platitude, we discover 
an occasional Oasis, we must not so far forget ourselves as to fancy 
any latent fertility in the sands. It is our purpose, however, to do 
the fullest justice to Mr. Lord, and we proceed at once to cull 
from his book whatever, in our opinion, will put in the fairest 
light his poetical pretensions. 

And first we extract the one brief passage which aroused in us 
what we recognized as the Poetical Sentiment. It occurs, at page 
94, in " Saint Mary's Gift," which, although excessively unorigi- 
nal at all points, is upon the whole, the least reprehensible poem 
of the volume. The heroine of the story having taken a sleeping 
draught, after the manner of Juliet, is conveyed to a vault, (still 
in the same manner) and (still in the same manner) awakes in the 
presence of her lover, who comes to gaze on what he supposes 

her corpse : 

And each unto the other was a dream ; 
And so they gazed without a stir or breath, 
Until her head into the golden stream 
Of her wide tresses, loosened from their wreath, 
Sank back, as she did yield again to death. 

At page 3, in a composition of much general eloquence, there 
occur a few lines of which we should not hesitate to speak enthu- 
siastically were we not perfectly aware that Mr. Lord has no claim 

to their origination : 

Ye winds 

That in the impalpable deep caves of air, 
Moving your silent plumes, in dreams of fight, 
Tumultuous lie, and from your half-stretched wings 
Beat the faint zephyrs that disturb the air ! 

At page 6, in the same poem, we meet also, a passage of high 

merit, although sadly disfigured : 

Thee the bright host of Heaven, 
The stars adore : — a thousand altars, fed 
By pure unwearied hands, like cressets blaze 
In the blue depths of night ; nor all unseen 
In the pale sky of day, with tempered light 
Burn radiant of thy praise. 

The disfiguration to which we allude, lies in the making a 
Vol. III.— 8 



WILLIAM W. LORD. 



blazing altar bum merely like a blazing cresset — a simile about as 
forcible as would be the likening an apple to a pear, or the sea- 
foam to the froth on a pitcher of Burton's ale. 

At page 7, still in the same poem, we find some verses which 
are very quotable, and will serve to make our readers understand 
what we mean by the eloquence of the piece : 

Great "Worshipper ! hast thou no thought of Him 
Who gave the Sun his brightness, winged the winds, 
And on the everlasting deep bestowed 
Its voiceless thunder — spread its fields of blue, 
And made them glorious like an inner sky 
From which the islands rise like steadfast clouds, 
How beautiful ! who gemmed thy zone with stars, 
Around thee threw his own cerulean robe, — 
And bent his coronal about thy brows, 
Shaped of the seven splendors of the light — 
Piled up the mountains for thy throne ; and thee 
The image of His beauty made and power, 
And gave thee to be sharer of His state, 
His majesty, His glory, and His fear ! 

We extract this not because we like it ourselves, but because 
we take it for granted that there are many who will, and that 
Mr. Lord himself would desire us to extract it as a specimen of 
his power. The " Great worshipper" is Nature. We disapprove, 
however, the man-milliner method in which she is tricked out, 
item by item. The " How beautiful !" should be understood, we 
fancy, as an expression of admiration on the part of Mr. Lord, for 
the fine idea which immediately precedes — the idea which we 
have italicized. It is, in fact, by no means destitute of force — but 
we have met it before. 

At page 70, there are two stanzas addressed to " My Sister." 

The first of these we cite as the best thing of equal length to be 

found in the book. Its conclusion is particularly noble. 

And shall we meet in heaven, and know and love ? 
Do human feelings in that world above 
Unchanged survive ? blest thought ! but ah, I fear 
That thou, dear sister, in some other sphere, 
Distant from mine will (wilt) find a brighter home, 
Where I, unworthy found, may never come : — 
Or be so high above me glorihed, 
That I a meant * angel, undescried, 
Seeking thine eyes, such love alone shall see 
As angels give to all bestowed on me ; 
And when my voice upon thy ear shall fall, 
Hear only such reply as angels give to all. 



WILLIAM W. LORD. 171 



We give the lines as they are : their grammatical construction 
is faulty ; and the punctuation of the ninth line renders the sense 
equivocal. 

Of that species of composition which comes most appropriately 
under the head, Drivel, we should have no trouble in selecting 
as many specimens as our readers could desire. We will afflict 
them with one or two : 

SONG. 

soft is the ringdove's eye of love 

When her mate returns from a weary flight ; 

And brightest of all the stars above 

Is the one bright star that leads the night. 

But softer thine eye than the dove's by far, 

When of friendship and pity thou speakest to me ; 

And brighter, O brighter, than eve's one star 
When of love, sweet maid, I speak to thee. 

Here is another 

SONG. 

Oh, a heart it loves, it loves thee, 

That never loved before 
Oh, a heart it loves, it loves thee, 

That heart can love no more. 

As the rose was in the bud, love, 

Ere it opened into sight, 
As yon star in drumlie daylight 

Behind the blue was bright — 

So thine image in my heart, love, 

As pure, as bright, as fair, 
Thyself unseen, unheeded, 

I saw and loved it there. 

Oh, a heart it loves, it loves thee 

As heart ne'er loved before ; 
Oh, a heart, it loves, loves, loves thee, 

That heart can love no more. 

In the " Widow's Complaint" we are entertained after this 

fashion : 

And what are these children 

I once thought my own, 
What now do they seem 

But his orphans alone ? 

In " The New Castalia" we have it thus : 



Then a pallid beauteous maiden 
Golden ghastly robes arrayed in 
Such a wondrous strain displayed in, 
In a wondrous song of Aidenne, 



172 WILLIAM W. LORD. 



That all the gods and goddesses 
Shook their golden yellow tresses, 
Parnassus' self made half afraid in. 

Just above this there is something about aged beldames 

dreaming 

of white throats sweetly jagged 

With a ragged butch-knife dull, 

And of night-mares neighing, weighing, 

On a sleeper's bosom squatting. 

But in mercy to our readers we forbear. 

Mr. Lord is never elevated above the dead level of bis habitual 
platitude, by even the happiest thesis in the world. That any 
man could, at one and the same time, fancy himself a poet and 
string together as many pitiable inanities as we see here, on so 
truly suggestive a thesis as that of " A Lady taking the Veil," is 
to our apprehension a miracle of miracles. The idea would' seem 
to be, of itself, sufficient to elicit fire from ice — to breathe anima- 
tion into the most stolid of stone. Mr. Lord winds up a disserta- 
tion on the subject by the patronizing advice — 

Ere thou, irrevocable, to that dark creed 
Art yielded, think, Oh Lady, think again. 

the whole of which would read better if it were 

Ere thou, irrevocable, to this d — d doggrel 

Art yielded, Lord, think ! think ! — ah think again. 

Even with the great theme, Niagara, our poet fails in his obvi- 
ous effort to work himself into a fit of inspiration. One of his 
poems has for title " A Hymn to Niagara" — but from beginning 
to end it is nothing more than a very silly " Hymn to Mr. Lord." 
Instead of describing the fall (as well as any Mr. Lord could be 
supposed to describe it) he rants about what / feel here, and 
about what / did not feel there — till at last the figure of little Mr. 
Lord, in the shape of a great capital I gets so thoroughly in be- 
tween the reader and the waterfall that not a particle of the latter 
is to be discovered. At one point the poet directs his soul to 
issue a proclamation as follows : 

Proclaim, my soul, proclaim it to the sky ! 
And tell the stars, and tell the hills whose feet 
Are in the depths of earth, their peaks in heaven, 
And tell the Ocean's old familiar face 
Beheld by day and night, in calm and storm, 
That they, nor aught beside in earth or heaven, 



WILLIAM W. LORD. 173 



Like thee, tremendous torrent, have so filled 
Its thought of beauty, and so awed with might ! 

The " Its' 1 has reference to the soul of Mr. Lord, who thinks it 
necessary to issue a proclamation to the stars and the hills and the 
ocean's old familiar face — lest the stars and the hills and the 
ocean's old familiar face should chance to be unaware of the fact 
that it, (the soul of Mr. Lord,) admitted the waterfall to be a fine 
thing — but whether the cataract for the compliment, or the stars 
for the information, are to be considered the party chiefly obliged 
— that, for the life of us, we cannot tell. 

From the "first impression" of the cataract, he says: 

At length my soul awaked — waked not again 
To be o'erpressed, o'ermastered, and engulphed, 
But of itself possessed, o'er all without 
Felt conscious mastery ! 

And then 
Retired within, and self-withdrawn, I stood 
The two-fold centre and informing soul 
Of one vast harmony of sights and sounds, 
And from that deep abyss, that rock-built shrine, 
Though mute my own frail voice, I poured a hymn 
Of " praise and gratulation" like the noise 
Of banded angels when they shout to wake 
Empyreal echoes! 

That so vast a personage as Mr. Lord should not be o'ermaster- 
ed by the cataract, but feel " conscious mastery over all without" 
— and over all within, too — is certainly nothing more than rea- 
sonable and proper — but then he should have left the detail of 
these little facts to the cataract or to some other uninterested in- 
dividual — even Cicero has been held to blame for a want of mo- 
desty — and although, to be sure, Cicero was not Mr. Lord, still 
Mr. Lord may be in danger of blame. He may have enemies 
{very little men !) who will pretend to deny that the " hymn of 
praise and gratulation" (if this is the hymn) bears at all points 
more than a partial resemblance to the " noise of banded angels 
when they shout to wake empyreal echoes." Not that we intend 
to deny it — but they will : — they are very little people and they 
will. 

We have said that the " remarkable" feature, or at least one 
of the " remarkable" features of this volume is its platitude — its 
flatness. Whenever the reader meets anything not decidedly 



174 WILLIAM W. LORD. 



flat, he may take it for granted at once, that it is stolen. When 
the poet speaks, for example, at page 148, of 

Flowers, of young poets the first words — 
who can fail to remember the line in the Merry Wives of Windsor. 
Fairies use flowers for their charactery ? 
At page 10 he says: 

Great oaks their heavenward lifted arms stretch forth 
In suppliance ! 

The same thought will be found in " Pelham," where the author 
is describing the dead tree beneath which is committed the mur- 
der. The grossest plagiarisms, indeed, abound. We would have 
no trouble, even, in pointing out a score from our most unimpor- 
tant self. At page 27, Mr. Lord says: 

They, albeit with inward pain 

Who thought to sing thy dirge, must sing thy Psean ! 

In a poem called " Lenore," we have it 

Avaunt ! to-night my heart is light — no dirge will I upraise, 
But waft the angel on her flight with a Psean of old days. 

At page 13, Mr. Lord says of certain flowers that 

Ere beheld on Earth they gardened Heaven ! 

We print it as printed — note of admiration and all. In a poem 
called " Al Aaraaf " we have it thus : 



-A gemmy flower, 



Inmate of highest stars, where erst it shamed 
All other loveliness : — 'twas dropped from Heaven 
And fell on gardens of the unforgiven 
In Trebizond. 

At page 57, Mr. Lord says: 

On the old and haunted mountain, 
There in dreams I dared to climb, 
Where the clear Castalian fountain 
(Silver fountain) ever tinkling 
All the green around it sprinkling 

Makes perpetual rhyme — 
To my dream enchanted, golden, 
Came a vision of the olden 

Long-forgotten time. 

There are no doubt many of our friends who will remember 
the commencement of our " Haunted Palace." 



WILLIAM W. LORD. 115 



In the greenest of our valleys 

By good angels tenanted, 
Once a fair and stately palace 

(Radiant palace) reared its head. 
In the monarch Thought's dominion 

It stood there. 
Never seraph spread a pinion 

Over fabric half so fair. 
Banners yellow, glorious, golden, 

On its roof did float and flow — 
This — all this — was in the olden 

Time, long ago. 

At page 60, Mr. Lord says : 

And the aged beldames napping, 
Dreamed of gently rapping, rapping, 
With a hammer gently tapping, 
Tapping on an infant's skull. 

In " The Raven," we have it : 

While I pondered nearly napping, 
Suddenly there came a rapping, 
As of some one gently tapping, 
Tapping at my chamber door. 

But it is folly to pursue these thefts. As to any property of 
our own, Mr. Lord is very cordially welcome to whatever use he 
can make of it. But others may not be so pacifically disposed, 
and the book before us might be very materially thinned and 
reduced in cost, by discarding from it all that belongs to Miss 
Barrett, Tennyson, Keats, Shelley, Proctor, Longfellow and 
Lowell — the very class of poets, by the way, whom Mr. William 
W. Lord, in his " New Castalia" the most especially affects to 
satirize and to contemn. 

It has been rumored, we say, or rather it has been announced 
that Mr. Lord is a graduate or perhaps a Professor of Princeton 
College — but we have had much difficulty in believing anything 
of the kind. The pages before us are not only utterly devoid of 
that classicism of tone and manner — that better species of classi- 
cism which a liberal education never fails to impart — but they 
abound in the most outrageously vulgar violations of grammar — 
of prosody in its most extended sense. 

Of versification, and all that appertains to it, Mr. Lord is igno- 
rant in the extreme. We doubt if he can tell the difference be- 
tween a dactyl and an anapaest. In the Heroic (Jambic) Pen- 
tameter he is continually introducing such verses as these : 



176 WILLIAM W. LORD. 



A faint symphony to Heaven ascending — 

No heart of love, God, Infinite One — 

Of a thought as weak as aspiration — 

Who were the original priests of this — 

Of grace, magnificence and power — 

O'erwhelm me ; this darkness that shuts out the sky — 
Alexandrines, in the same metre, are encountered at every step — 
but it is very clear from the points at which they are met, and at 
which the ccesura is placed, that Mr. Lord has no idea of employ- 
ing them as Alexandrines : — They are merely excessive, that is to 
say, defective Pentameters. In a word, judging by his rhythm, we 
might suppose that the poet could neither see, hear, nor make use 
of his fingers. We do not know, in America, a versifier so utterly 
wretched and comtemptible. 

His most extraordinary sins, however, are in point of English. 
Here is his dedication, embodied in the very first page of the 
book : — 

" To Professor Albert B. Dod, These Poems, the offspring of an 
Earnest (if ineffectual) Desire towards the True and Beautiful, 
which were hardly my own by Paternity, when they became his 
by Adoption, are inscribed, with all Reverence and Affection, by 
the Author." 

What is anybody to make of all this ? What is the meaning 
of a desire toward? — and is it the " True and Beautiful" or. the 
" Poems" which were hardly Mr. Lord's " own by paternity before 
they became his [Mr. Dod's] by adoption." 

At page 12, we read : 

Think heedless one, or who with wanton step 
Tramples the flowers. 

At page 75, within the compass of eleven lines, we have three 
of the grossest blunders : 

Oh Thou for whom as in thyself Thou art, 
And by thyself perceived, we know no name, 
Nor dare not seek to express — but unto us, 
Adonai ! who before the heavens were built 
Or Earth's foundation laid, within thyself, 
Thine own most glorious habitation dwelt, 
But when within the abyss, 



WILLIAM W. LORD. 177 



With sudden light illuminated, 
Thou, thine image to behold, 
Into its quickened depths 
Looked down with brooding eye ! 

At page *79, we read : 

But ah ! my heart, unduteous to my will, 
Breathes only sadness ; like an instrument 
From whose quick strings, when hands devoid of skill 
Solicit joy, they murmur and lament. 

At page 86, is something even grosser than this : 

And still and rapt as pictured Saint might be 
Like saint-like seemed as her she did adore. 

At page 129, there is a similar error: 

With half-closed eyes and ruffled feathers known 
As them that fly not with the changing year. 

At page 128, we find — 

And thou didst dwell therein so truly loved 
As none have been nor shall be loved again, 
And yet perceived not, &c. 

At page 155, we have — 

But yet it may not cannot be 

That thou at length hath sunk to rest. 

Invariably Mr. Lord writes didst did'st ; couldst could'st, &c. 
The fact is he is absurdly ignorant of the commonest principles of 
grammar — and the only excuse we can make to our readers for 
annoying them with specifications in this respect is that, without 
the specifications, we should never have been believed. 

But enough of this folly. We are heartily tired of the book, 
and thoroughly disgusted with the impudence of the parties who 
have been aiding and abetting in thrusting it before the public. 
To the poet himself we have only to say — from any farther speci- 
mens of your stupidity, good Lord deliver us ! 



g* 



178 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

Mr. Bryant's position in the poetical world is, perhaps, better 
settled than that of any American. There is less difference of 
opinion about his rank ; but, as usual, the agreement is more de- 
cided in private literary circles than in what appears to be the pub- 
lic expression of sentiment as gleaned from the press. I may as 
well observe here, too, that this coincidence of opinion in private 
circles is in all cases very noticeable when compared with the dis- 
crepancy of the apparent public opinion. In private it is quite a 
rare thing to find any strongly-marked disagreement — I mean, of 
course, about mere autorial merit. The author accustomed to se- 
clusion, and mingling for the first time freely with the literary peo- 
ple about him, is invariably startled and delighted to find that the 
decisions of his own unbiased judgment — decisions to which he 
has refrained from giving voice on account of their broad contra- 
diction to the decision of the press — are sustained and considered 
quite as matters of course by almost every person with whom he 
converses. The fact is, that when brought face to face with each 
other, we are constrained to a certain amount of honesty by the 
sheer trouble it causes us to mould the countenance to a lie. We 
put on paper with a grave air what we could not for our lives as- 
sert personally to a friend without either blushing or laughing 
outright. That the opinion of the press is not an honest opinion, 
that necessarily it is impossible that it should be an honest opinion, 
is never denied by the members of the press themselves. Individ- 
ual presses, of course, are now and then honest, but I speak of the 
combined effect. Indeed, it would be difficult for those conver- 
sant with the modus operandi of public journals to deny the gene- 
ral falsity of impression conveyed. Let in America a book be 
published by an unknown, careless or uninfluential author ; if he 
publishes it " on his own account," he will be confounded at find- 
ing that no notice of it is taken at all. If it has been entrusted to 
a publisher of caste, there will appear forthwith in each of the 
leading business papers a variously-phrased critique to the extent 
of three or four lines, and to the effect that " we have received, 



WILLIAM CTJLLEN BRYANT. 179 

from the fertile press of So and So, a volume entitled This and 
That, which appears to be well worthy perusal, and which is ' got 
up' in the customary neat style of the enterprising firm of So and 
So." On the other hand, let our author have acquired influence, 
experience, or (what will stand him in good stead of either) effron- 
tery, on the issue of his book he will obtain from his publisher a 
hundred copies (or more, as the case may be,) " for distribution 
among friends connected with the press." Armed with these, he 
will call personally either at the office or (if he understands his 
game) at the private residence of every editor within his reach, en- 
ter into conversation, compliment the journalist, interest him, as 
if incidentally, in the subject of the book, and finally, watching an 
opportunity, beg leave to hand him " a volume which, quite op- 
portunely, is on the very matter now under discussion." If the 
editor seems sufficiently interested, the rest is left to fate ; but if 
there is any lukewarmness, (usually indicated by a polite regret 
on the editor's part that he really has " no time to render the 
work that justice which its importance demands,") then our author 
is prepared to understand and to sympathize ; has, luckily, a 
friend thoroughly conversant with the topic, and who (perhaps) 
could be persuaded to write some account of the volume — provi- 
ded that the editor would be kind enough just to glance over the 
critique and amend it in accordance with his own particular views. 
Glad to fill half a column or so of his editorial space, and still more 
glad to get rid of his visitor, the journalist assents. The author 
retires, consults the friend, instructs him touching the strong 
points of the volume, and insinuating in some shape a quid pro 
quo, gets an elaborate critique written, (or, what is more usual and 
far more simple, writes it himself,) and his business in this indi- 
vidual quarter is accomplished. Nothing more than sheer impu- 
dence is requisite to accomplish it in all. 

Now the effect of this system (for it has really grown to be such) 
is obvious. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, men of genius, 
too indolent and careless about worldly concerns to bestir them- 
selves after this fashion, have also that pride of intellect which 
would prevent them, under any circumstances, from even insinu- 
ating, by the presentation of a book to a member of the press, a 
desire to have that book reviewed. They, consequently, and their 



180 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

works, are utterly overwhelmed and extinguished in the flood of 
the apparent public adulation upon which in gilded barges are 
borne triumphant the ingenious toady and the diligent quack. 

In general, the books of the toadies and quacks, not being read 
at all, are safe from any contradiction of this self-bestowed praise ; 
but now and then it happens that the excess of the laudation works 
out in part its own remedy. Men of leisure, hearing one of the 
toady works commended, look at it, read its preface and a few 
pages of its body, and throw it aside with disgust, wondering at 
the ill taste of the editors who extol it. But there is an iteration, 
and then a continuous reiteration of the panegyric, till these men 
of leisure begin to suspect themselves in the wrong, to fancy that 
there may really be something good lying perdu in the volume. 
In a fit of desperate curiosity they read it through critically, their 
indignation growing hotter at each succeeding page till it gets the 
better even of contempt. The result is, that reviews now appear 
in various quarters entirely at variance with the opinions so gene- 
rally expressed, and which, but for these indignation reviews, 
would have passed universally current as the opinion of the pub- 
lic. It is in this manner that those gross seeming discrepancies 
arise which so often astonish us, but which vanish instantaneously 
in private society. 

But although it may be said, in general, that Mr. Bryant's posi- 
tion is comparatively well settled, still for some time past there 
has been a growing tendency to under-estimate him. The new 
licentious "schools" of poetry — I do not now speak of the tran- 
scendentalists, who are the merest nobodies, fatiguing even them- 
selves — but the Tennysonian and Barrettian schools, having, in 
their rashness of spirit, much in accordance with the whole spirit 
of the age, thrown into the shade necessarily all that seems akin to 
the conservatism of half a century ago. The conventionalities, 
even the most justifiable decora of composition, are regarded, per 
se y with a suspicious eye. When I say per se, I mean that, from 
finding them so long in connexion with conservatism of thought, 
we have come at last to dislike them, not merely as the outward 
visible signs of that conservatism, but as things evil in themselves. 
It is very clear that those accuracies and elegancies of style, and 
of general manner, which in the time of Pope were considered as 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 181 

prima facie and indispensable indications of genius, are now con- 
versely regarded. How few are willing to admit the possibility 
of reconciling genius with artistic skill ! Yet this reconciliation is 
not only possible, but an absolute necessity. It is a mere preju- 
dice* which has hitherto prevented the union, by studiously insist- 
ing upon a natural repulsion which not only does not exist, but 
which is at war with all the analogies of nature. The greatest 
poems will not be witten until this prejudice is annihilated ; and I 
mean to express a very exalted opinion of Mr. Bryant when I say that 
his works in time to come will do much towards the annihilation. 

I have never disbelieved in the perfect consistency, and even 
congeniality, of the highest genius and the profoundest art ; but 
in the case of the author of " The Ages," I have fallen into the 
general error of undervaluing his poetic ability on account of the 
mere " elegances and accuracies" to which allusion has already 
been made. I confess that, with an absolute abstraction from all 
personal feelings, and with the most sincere intention to do jus- 
tice, I was at one period beguiled into this popular error ; there 
can be no difficulty, therefore, on my part, in excusing the inad- 
vertence in others. 

It will never do to claim for Bryant a genius of the loftiest or- 
der, but there has been latterly, since the days of Mr. Longfellow 
and Mr. Lowell, a growing disposition to deny him genius in any 
respect. He is now commonly spoken of as "a man of high poet- 
ical talent, very 'correct, 1 with a warm appreciation of the beauty 
of nature and great descriptive powers, but rather too much of 
the old-school manner of Cowper, Goldsmith and Young." This 
is the truth, but not the whole truth. Mr. Bryant has genius, and 
that of a marked character, but it has been overlooked by modern 
schools, because deficient in those externals which have become in 
a measure symbolical of those schools. 

Dr. Griswold, in summing up his comments on Bryant, has the 
following significant objections : " His genius is not versatile ; he 
has related no history ; he has not sung of the passion of love ; 
he has not described artificial life. Still the tenderness and feel- 
ing in ' The Death of the Flowers,' ' Rizpah,' ' The Indian Girl's 
Lament,' and other pieces, show that he might have excelled in 
delineations of the gentler passions had he made them his study." 



182 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

Now, in describing no artificial life, in relating no history, in not 
singing the passion of love, the poet has merely shown himself 
the profound artist, has merely evinced a proper consciousness that 
such are not the legitimate themes of poetry. That they are not, 
I have repeatedly shown, or attempted to show, and to go over the 
demonstration now would be foreign to the gossiping and desul- 
tory nature of the present article. What Dr. Griswold means by 
"the gentler passions" is, I presume, not very clear to himself; 
but it is possible that he employs the phrase in consequence of the 
gentle, unpassionate emotion induced by the poems of which he 
quotes the titles. It is precisely this " unpassionate emotion" 
which is the limit of the true poetical art. Passion proper and 
poesy are discordant. Poetry, in elevating, tranquilizes the soul. 
With the heart it has nothing to do. For a fuller explanation of 
these views I refer the reader to an analysis of a poem by Mrs. 
Welby — an analysis contained in an article called " Marginalia," 
and published about a year ago in " The Democratic Review." 

The editor of " The Poets and Poetry of America" thinks the 
literary precocity of Bryant remarkable. " There are few recorded 
more remarkable," he says. The first edition of "The Embargo" 
was in 1808, and the poet was born in 1794 ; he was more than 
thirteen, then, when the satire was printed — although it is report- 
ed to have been written a year earlier. I quote a few lines. 

Ob, might some patriot rise, the gloom dispel, 
Chase Error's mist and break the magic spell ! 
But vain the wish ; for, hark ! the murmuring meed 
Of hoarse applause from yonder shed proceed. 
Enter and view the thronging concourse there, 
Intent with gaping mouth and stupid stare ; 
While in the midst their supple leader stands, 
Harangues aloud and flourishes his hands, 
To adulation tunes his servile, throat, 
And sues successful for each blockhead's vote. 

This is a fair specimen of the whole, both as regards its satiri- 
cal and rhythmical power. A satire is, of course, no poem. I 
have known boys of an earlier age do better things, although the 
case is rare. All depends upon the course of education. Bryant's 
father " was familiar with the best English literature, and perceiv- 
ing in his son indications of superior genius, attended carefully to 
his instruction, taught him the art of composition, and guided his 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 183 

literary taste." This being understood, the marvel of such verse 
as I have quoted ceases at once, even admitting it to be thoroughly 
the boy's own work ; but it is difficult to make any such admis- 
sion. The father must have suggested, revised, retouched. 

The longest poem of Bryant is " The Ages" — thirty-five Spen- 
serian stanzas. It is the one improper theme of its author. The 
design is, " from a survey of the past ages of the world, and of the 
successive advances of mankind in knowledge and virtue, to justify 
and confirm the hopes of the philanthropist for the future destinies 
of the human race." All this would have been more rationally, 
because more effectually, accomplished in prose. Dismissing it as 
a poem, (which in its general tendency it is not,) one might com- 
mend the force of its argumentation but for the radical error of de- 
ducing a hope of progression from the cycles of physical nature. 

The sixth stanza is a specimen of noble versification (within the 

narrow limits of the Iambic Pentameter). 

Look on this beautiful world and read the truth 
In her fair page ; see, every season brings 
New change to her of everlasting youth ; 
Still the green soil with joyous living things 
Swarms ; the wide air is full of joyous wings ; 
And myriads still are happy in the sleep 
Of Ocean's azure gulfs and where he flings 
The restless surge. Eternal Love doth keep 
In his complacent arms, the earth, the air, the deep. 

The cadences here at page, swarms and surge, cannot be sur- 
passed. There are comparatively few consonants. Liquids and 
the softer vowels abound, and the partial line after the pause at 
" surge," with the stately march of the succeeding Alexandrine, is 
one of the finest conceivable finales. 

The poem, in general, has unity, completeness. Its tone of 
calm, elevated and hopeful contemplation, is well sustained 
throughout. There is an occasional quaint grace of expression, 

as in 

Nurse of full streams and lifter up of proud 
Sky-mingling mountains that o'erlook the cloud ! 

or of antithetical and rhythmical force combined, as in 

The shock that hurled 
To dust, in many fragments dashed and strown 
The throne whose roots were in another world 
And whose far-stretching shadow awed our own. 



184 WILLIAM CTJLLEN BRYANT. 

But we look in vain for anything more worthy commendation. 

" Thanatopsis" is the poem by which its author is best known, 
but is by no means his best poem. It owes the extent of its celeb- 
rity to its nearly absolute freedom from defect, in the ordinary un- 
derstanding of the term. I mean to say that its negative merit 
recommends it to the public attention. It is a thoughtful, well 
phrased, well constructed, well versified poem. The concluding 
thought is exceedingly noble, and has done wonders for the success 
of the whole composition. 

" The Waterfowl" is very beautiful, but like " Thanatopsis," 
owes a great deal to its completeness and pointed termination. 

" Oh, Fairest of the Rural Maids !" will strike every poet as the 
truest poem written by Bryant. It is richly ideal. 

"June" is sweet and perfectly well modulated in its rhythm, 
and inexpressibly pathetic. It serves well to illustrate my pre- 
vious remarks about passion in its connexion with poetry. In 
" June" there is, very properly, nothing of the intense passion of 
grief, but the subdued sorrow which comes up, as if perforce, to the 
surface of the poet's gay sayings about his grave, we find thrilling 
us to the soul, while there is yet a spiritual elevation in the thrill. 

t And what if cheerful shouts at noon 

Come, from the village sent, 
Or songs of maids beneath the moon 

With fairy laughter blent ? 
And what if, in the evening light, 
Betrothed lovers walk in sight 

Of my low monument ? 
I would the lovely scene around 
Might know no sadder sight nor sound. 
I know — I know I should not see 

The season's glorious show, 
Nor would its brightness shine for me, 

Nor its wild music flow ; 
But if around my place of sleep 
The friends I love should come to weep, 

They might not haste to go : — 
Soft airs, and song, and light, and bloom, 
Should keep them lingering by my tomb. 

The thoughts here belong to the highest class of poetry, the 
imaginative-natural, and are of themselves sufficient to stamp their 
author a man of genius. 

I copy at random a few passages of similar cast, inducing a 
similar conviction. 



WILLIAM CULLEN" BRYANT. 185 

The great heavens 
Seem to stoop down upon the scene in love, 
A nearer vault and of a tenderer blue 
Than that which bends above the eastern hills 



Till twilight blushed, and lovers walked and wooed 
In a forgotten language and old tunes 
From instruments of unrememberedform, 
Gave the soft winds a voice 

Breezes of the south, 
That toss the golden and the flame-like flowers, 
And pass the prairie hawk, that, poised on high, 
Flaps his broad wings, yet moves not. . . . 

On the breast of earth 
I lie, and listen to her mighty voice — 
A voice of many tones sent up from streams 
That wander through the gloom, from woods unseen ; 
Swayed by the sioeeping of the tides of air ; 
From rocky chasms where darkness dwells all day, 
And hollows of the great invisible hills, 
And sands that edge the ocean, stretching far 
Into the night — a melancholy sound ! . 

All the green herbs 
Are stirring in his breath ; a thousand flowers 
By the road side and the borders of the brook, 
Nod gayly to each other. 

[There is a fine " echo of sound to sense'' in " the borders of the 

brook," etc.; and in the same poem from which these lines are 

taken, (" The Summer Wind,") may be found two other equally 

happy examples, e. g. 

For me, I lie 

Languidly in the shade, where the thick turf, 

Yet virgin from the kisses of the sun, 

Retains some freshness. 
And again — 

All is silent, save the faint 

And interrupted murmur of the bee 

Settling on the sick flowers, and then again 

Instantly on the wing. 

I resume the imaginative extracts.] 

Paths, homes, graves, ruins from the lowest glen 

To where life shrinks from the fierce Alpine air 

And the blue gentian flower that in the breeze 

Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last 

A shoot of that old vine that made 

The nations silent in the shade 

But 'neath yon crimson tree, 
Lover to listening maid might breathe his flame, 

Nor mark, toithin its roseate canopy, 
Her flush of maiden shame 



186 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

The mountains that infold, 
In their wild sweep, the colored landscape round, 
Seem groups of giant kings in purple and gold 

That guard the enchanted ground. 

[This latter passage is especially beautiful. Happily to endow 
inanimate nature with sentience and a capability of action, is one 
of the severest tests of the poet.] 

. . . .There is a power whose care 
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast, 

The desert and illimitable air. 
Lone, wandering, but not lost 

Pleasant shall be thy way, where weekly bows 
The shutting flowers and darkling waters pass, 
And 'twizt the overshadowing branches and the grass. . . . 

Sweet odors in the sea air, sweet and strange, 

Shall tell the home-sick mariner of the shore, 
And, listening to thy murmur, he shall deem 
He hears the rustling leaf and running stream 

In a " Sonnet, To ," are some richly imaginative lines. I 

quote the whole. 

Ay, thou art for the grave ; thy glances shine 

Too brightly to shine long : another spring 
Shall deck her for men's eyes, but not for thine, 

Sealed in a sleep which knows no waking. 
The fields for thee have no medicinal leaf, 

And the vexed ore no mineral of power ; 
And they who love thee wait in anxious grief 

Till the slow plague shall bring the fatal hour. 
Glide softly to thy rest, then : death should come 

Gently to one of gentle mould like thee, 
As light winds wandering through groves of bloom, 

Detach the delicate blossom from the tree, 
Close thy sweet eyes calmly and without pain, 
And we will trust in God to see thee yet again. 

The happiest finale to these brief extracts will be the magnifi- 
cent conclusion of ' w Thanatopsis." 

So live, that, when thy summons comes to join 
The innumerable caravan that moves 
To that mysterious realm where each shall take 
His chamber in the silent halls of death, 
Thou go not, like the quarry slave at night, 
Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed 
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave — 
Dike one that draws the drapery of his couch 
About him and lies down to pleasant dreams. 

In the minor morals of the muse Mr. Bryant excels. In versifi- 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 187 

cation {as far as he goes) he is unsurpassed in America — unless, 
indeed, by Mr. Sprague. Mr. Longfellow is not so thorough a 
versifier within Mr. Bryant's limits, but a far better one upon the 
whole, on account of his greater range. Mr. B., however, is by no 
means always accurate — or defensible, for accurate is not the term. 
His lines are occasionally unpronounceable through excess of harsh 
consonants, as in 

As if they loved to breast the breeze that sweeps the cool clear sky. 

Now and then he gets out of his depth in attempting anapaestic 

rhythm, of which he makes sad havoc, as in 

And Rispah, once the loveliest of all 

That bloomed and smiled in the court of Saul. 

Not unfrequently, too, even his pentameters are inexcusably 
rough, as in 

Kind influence. Lo 1 their orbs burn more bright, 
which can only be read metrically by drawing out " influence" into 
three marked syllables, shortening the long monosyllable " Lo !" 
and lenghtening the short one " their." 

Mr. Bryant is not devoid of mannerisms, one of the most no- 
ticeable of which is his use of the epithet " old" preceded by 
some other adjective, e. g. — 

In all that proud old world beyond the deep ;. . . . 
There is a tale about these gray old rocks ;. . . . 
The wide old woods resounded with her song;. . . . 
And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven, 
etc. etc. etc. These duplicates occur so frequently as to excite a 
smile upon each repetition. 

Of merely grammatical errors the poet is rarely guilty. Faulty 
constructions are more frequently chargeable to him. In " The 
Massacre of Scio" we read — 

Till the last link of slavery's chain 
Is shivered to be worn no more. 

What shall be worn no more ? The chain, of course — but the 
link is implied. It will be understood that I pick these flaws only 
with difficulty from the poems of Bryant. He is, in the " minor 
morals," the most generally correct of our poets. 

He is now fifty-two years of age. In height, he is, perhaps, 
five feet nine. His frame is rather robust. His features are large 



188 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 

but thin. His countenance is sallow, nearly bloodless. His eyes 
are piercing gray, deep set, with large projecting eyebrows. His 
mouth is wide and massive, the expression of the smile hard, cold 
— even sardonic. The forehead is broad, with prominent organs 
of ideality ; a good deal bald ; the hair thin and grayish, as are 
also the whiskers, which he wears in a simple style. His bearing 
is quite distinguished, full of the aristocracy of intellect. In gen- 
eral, he looks in better health than before his last visit to Eng- 
land. He seems active — physically and morally energetic. His 
dress is plain to the extreme of simplicity, although of late there 
is a certain degree of Anglicism about it. 

In character no man stands more loftily than Bryant. The pe- 
culiarly melancholy expression of his countenance has caused him 
to be accused of harshness, or coldness of heart. Never was there 
a greater mistake. His soul is charity itself, in all respects gener- 
ous and noble. His manners are undoubtedly reserved. 

Of late days he has nearly, if not altogether abandoned literary 
pursuits, although still editing, with unabated vigor, " The New 
York Evening Post." He is married, (Mrs. Bryant still living,) 
has two daughters, (one of them Mrs. Parke Godwin,) and is re- 
siding for the present at Vice-Chancellor McCown's, near the junc- 
tion of Warren and Church streets. 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.* 

The reputation of the author of " Twice-Told Tales " has been 
confined, until very lately, to literary society ; and I have not 
been wrong, perhaps, in citing him as the example, par excellence, 
in this country, of the privately-admired and publicly-unappre- 
ciated man of genius. Within the last year or two, it is true, an 
occasional critic has been urged, by honest indignation, into very 
warm approval. Mr. Webber, for instance, (than whom no one 

* Twice-Told Tales. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. James Munroe <fe Co., 
Boston. 1842. 

Mosses from an Old Manse. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Wiley & Putnam, 
New York. 1846. 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 189 

has a keener relish for that kind of writing which Mr. Hawthorne 
has best illustrated,) gave us, in a late number of " The American 
Review," a cordial and certainly a full tribute to his talents ; and 
since the issue of the " Mosses from an Old Manse," criticisms of 
similar tone have been by no means infrequent in our more author- 
itative journals. I can call to mind few reviews of Hawthorne 
published before the " Mosses." One I remember in " Arcturus " 
(edited by Matthews and Duyckinck) for May, 1841 ; another in 
the " American Monthly " (edited by Hoffman and Herbert) for 
March, 1838 ; a third in the ninety-sixth number of the "North 
American Review." These criticisms, however, seemed to have 
little effect on the popular taste — at least, if we are to form any 
idea of the popular taste by reference to its expression in the 
newspapers, or by the sale of the author's book. It was never 
the fashion (until lately) to speak of him in any summary of our 
best authors. 

The daily critics would say, on such occasions, "Is there 
not Irving and Cooper, and Bryant, and Paulding, and — 
Smith ?" or, " Have we not Halleck and Dana, and Longfellow, 
and — Thompson ?" or, " Can we not point triumphantly to our 
own Sprague, Willis, Channing, Bancroft, Prescott and — Jenkins ?" 
but these unanswerable queries were never wound up by the name 
of Hawthorne. 

Beyond doubt, this inappreciation of him on the part of the 
public arose chiefly from the two causes to which I have referred 
— from the facts that he is neither a man of wealth nor a quack ; 
but these are insufficient to account for the whole effect. No 
small portion of it is attributable to the very marked idiosyncrasy 
of Mr. Hawthorne himself. In one sense, and in great measure, 
to be peculiar is to be original, and than the true originality there 
is no higher literary virtue. This true or commendable originality, 
however, implies not the uniform, but the continuous peculiarity 
— a peculiarity springing from ever-active vigor of fancy — better 
still if from ever-present force of imagination, giving its own hue, 
its own character to everything it touches, and, especially, self 
impelled to touch everything. 

It is often said, inconsiderately, that very original writers al- 
. 7S fail in popularity — that such and such persons are too origi- 



190 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 

nal to be comprehended by the mass. " Too peculiar," should 
be the phrase, " too idiosyncratic." It is, in fact, the excitable, 
undisciplined and child-like popular mind which most keenly feels 
the original. 

The criticism of the conservatives, of the hackneys, of the 
cultivated old clergymen of the " North American Review," 
is precisely the criticism which condemns and alone con- 
demns it. " It becometh not a divine," saith Lord Coke, " to be 
of a fiery and salamandrine spirit." Their conscience allowing 
them to move nothing themselves, these dignitaries have a holy 
horror of being moved. " Give us quietude" they say. Open- 
ing their mouths with proper caution, they sigh forth the word 
" Repose.' 1 And this is, indeed, the one thing they should be 
permitted to enjoy, if only upon the Christian principle of give 
and take. 

The fact is, that if Mr. Hawthorne were really original, he 
could not fail of making himself felt by the public. But the 
fact is, he is not original in any sense. Those who speak of him 
as original, mean nothing more than that he differs in his manner 
or tone, and in his choice of subjects, from any author of their 
acquaintance — their acquaintance not extending to the German 
Tieck, whose manner, in some of his works, is absolutely identical 
with that habitual to Hawthorne. But it is clear that the ele- 
ment of the literary originality is novelty. The element of its 
appreciation by the reader is the reader's sense of the new. 
Whatever gives him a new and insomuch a pleasurable emotion, 
he considers original, and whoever frequently gives him such 
emotion, he considers an original writer. In a word, it is by the 
sum total of these emotions that he decides upon the writer's 
claim to originality. I may observe here, however, that there is 
clearly a point at which even novelty itself would cease to pro- 
duce the legitimate originality, if we judge this originality, as we 
should, by the effect designed : this point is that at which novelty 
becomes nothing novel ; and here the artist, to preserve his origi- 
nality, will subside into the commonplace. No one, I think, has 
noticed that, merely through inattention to this matter, Moore 
has comparatively failed in his " Lalla Rookh." Few readers, 
and indeed few critics, have commended this poem for originality 



\ 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 191 

— and, in fact, the effect, originality, is not produced by it — yet 
no work of equal size so abounds in the happiest originalities, in- 
dividually considered. They are so excessive as, in the end, to 
havite? m tne rea d er a H capacity for their appreciation. 
r l'hese points properly understood, it will be seen that the critic 
(unacquainted with Tieck) who reads a single tale or essay by 
Hawthorne, may be justified in thinking him original ; but the 
tone, or manner, or choice of subject, which induces in this critic 
the sense of the new, will — if not in a second tale, at least in a 
third and all subsequent ones — not only fail of inducing it, but 
bring about an exactly antagonistic impression. In concluding a 
volume, and more especially in concluding all the volumes of the 
author, the critic will abandon his first design of calling him 
" original," and content himself with styling him " peculiar." 

With the vague opinion that to be original is to be unpopular, 
I could, indeed, agree, were I to adopt an understanding of origi- 
nality which, to my surprise, I have known adopted by many 
who have a right to be called critical. They have limited, in a 
love for mere words, the literary to the metaphysical originality. 
They regard as original in letters, only such combinations of 
thought, of incident, and so forth, as are, in fact, absolutely novel. 
It is clear, however, not only that it is the novelty of effect alone 
which is worth consideration, but that this effect is best wrought, 
for the end of all fictitious composition, pleasure, by shunning ra- 
ther than by seeking the absolute novelty of combination. Origi- 
nality, thus understood, tasks and startles the intellect, and so 
brings into undue action the faculties to which, in the lighter lit- 
erature, we least appeal. And thus understood, it cannot fail to 
prove unpopular with the masses, who, seeking in this literature 
amusement, are positively offended by instruction. But the true 
originality — true in respect of its purposes — is that which, in 
bringing out the half-formed, the reluctant, or the unexpressed 
fancies of mankind, or in exciting the more delicate pulses of the 
heart's passion, or in giving birth to some universal sentiment or 
instinct in embryo, thus combines with the pleasurable effect of 
apparent novelty, a real egotistic delight. The reader, in the case 
first supposed, (that of the absolute novelty,) is excited, but em- 
barrassed, disturbed, in some degree even pained at his own want 



192 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 

of perception, at his own folly in not having himself hit upon the 
idea. In the second case, his pleasure is doubled. He is filled 
with an intrinsic and extrinsic delight. He feels and intensely 
enjoys the seeming novelty of the thought, enjoys it as r^. 11 
novel, as absolutely original with the writer — and himseh. 
two, he fancies, have, alone of all men, thought thus. They two 
have, together, created this thing. Henceforward there is a bond 
of sympathy between them — a sympathy which irradiates every 
subsequent page of the book. 

There is a species of writing which, with some difficulty, may 
be admitted as a lower degree of what I have called the true 
original. In its perusal, we say to ourselves, not "how original 
this is !" nor " here is an idea which I and the author have alone 
entertained," but "here is a charmingly obvious fancy," or some- 
times even, " here is a thought which I am not sure has ever oc- 
curred to myself, but which, of course, has occurred to all the 
rest of the world." This kind of composition (which still apper- 
tains to a high order) is usually designated as " the natural." It 
has little external resemblance, but strong internal affinity to the 
true original, if, indeed, as I have suggested, it is not of this lat- 
ter an inferior degree. It is best exemplified, among English wri- 
ers, in Addison, Irving and Hawthorne. The " ease " which is so 
often spoken of as its distinguishing feature, it has been the fash- 
ion to regard as ease in appearance alone, as a point of really dif- 
ficult attainment. This idea, however, must be received with 
some reservation. The natural style is difficult only to those who 
should never intermeddle with it — to the unnatural. It is but 
the result of writing with the understanding, or with the instinct^ 
that the tone, in composition, should be that which, at any given 
point or upon any given topic, would be the tone of the great 
mass of humanity. The author who, after the manner of the 
North Americans, is merely at all times quiet, is, of course, upon 
most occasions, merely silly or stupid, and has no more right to 
be thought " easy " or " natural " than has a cockney exquisite, or 
the sleeping beauty in the wax- works. 

The " peculiarity," or sameness, or monotone of Hawthorne, 
would, in its mere character of " peculiarity," and without refer- 
ence to what is the peculiarity, suffice to deprive him of all chan< 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 193 

of popular appreciation. But at his failure to be appreciated, we 
can, of course, no longer wonder, when we find him monotonous 
at decidedly the worst of all possible points — at that point which, 
having the least concern with Nature, is the farthest removed 
from the popular intellect, from the popular sentiment, and from 
the popular taste. I allude to the strain of allegory which com- 
pletely overwhelms the greater number of his subjects, and which 
in some measure interferes with the direct conduct of absolutely all. 

In defence of allegory, (however, or for whatever object em- 
ployed,) there is scarcely one respectable word to be said. Its 
best appeals are made to the fancy — that is to say, to our sense 
of adaptation, not of matters proper, but of matters improper for 
the purpose, of the real with the unreal ; having never more of 
intelligible connexion than has something with nothing, never 
half so much of effective affinity as has the substance for the 
shadow. The deepest emotion aroused within us by the happiest 
allegory, as allegory, is a very, very imperfectly satisfied sense of 
the writer's ingenuity in overcoming a difficulty we should have 
preferred his not having attempted to overcome. The fallacy of 
the idea that allegory, in any of its moods, can be made to enforce 
a truth — that metaphor, for example, may illustrate as well as 
embellish an argument — could be promptly demonstrated ; the 
converse of the supposed fact might be shown, indeed, with very 
little trouble — but these are topics foreign to my present purpose. 
One thing is clear, that if allegory ever establishes a fact, it is by 
dint of overturning a fiction. Where the suggested meaning runs 
through the obvious one in a very profound under-current, so as 
never to interfere with the upper one without our own volition, 
so as never to show itself unless called to the surface, there only, 
for the proper uses of fictitious narrative, is it available at all. 
Under the best circumstances, it must always interfere with that 
unity of effect which, to the artist, is worth all the allegory in 
the world. Its vital injury, however, is rendered to the most vi- 
tally important point in fiction — that of earnestness or verisimili- 
tude. That " The Pilgrim's Progress " is a ludicrously over-rated 
book, owing its seeming popularity to one or two of those acci- 
dents in critical literature which by the critical are sufficiently 
well understood, is a matter upon which no two thinking people 

Vol. III.- 9 



194 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 

disagree ; but the pleasure derivable from it, in any sense, will be 
found in the direct ratio of the reader's capacity to smother its 
true purpose, in the direct ratio of his ability to keep the allegory 
out of sight, or of his inability to comprehend it. Of allegory 
properly handled, judiciously subdued, seen only as a shadow or 
by suggestive glimpses, and making its nearest approach to truth 
in a not obtrusive and therefore not unpleasant appositeness, the 
" Undine " of De La Motte Fouque is the best, and undoubtedly 
a very remarkable specimen. 

The obvious causes, however, which have prevented Mr. Haw- 
thorne's popularity, do not suffice to condemn him in the eyes of 
the few who belong properly to books, and to whom books, per- 
haps, do not quite so properly belong. These few estimate an 
author, not as do the public, altogether by what he does, but in 
great measure — indeed, even in the greatest measure — by what he 
evinces a capability of doing. In this view, Hawthorne stands 
among literary people in America much in the same light as did 
Coleridge in England. The few, also, through a certain warping 
of the taste, which long pondering upon books as books merely 
never fails to induce, are not in condition to view the errors of a 
scholar as errors altogether. At any time these gentlemen are 
prone to think the public not right rather than an educated au- 
thor wrong. But the simple truth is, that the writer who aims 
at impressing the people, is always wrong when he fails in forcing 
that people to receive the impression. How far Mr. Hawthorne 
has addressed the people at all, is, of course, not a question for 
me to decide. His books afford strong internal evidence of hav- 
ing been written to himself and his particular friends alone. 

There has long existed in literature a fatal and unfounded pre- 
judice, which it will be the office of this age to overthrow — the 
idea that the mere bulk of a work must enter largely into our es- 
timate of its merit. I do not suppose even the weakest of the 
Quarterly reviewers weak enough to maintain that in a book's size 
or mass, abstractly considered, there is anything which especially 
calls for our admiration. A mountain, simply through the sensa- 
tion of physical magnitude which it conveys, does indeed, effect 
us with a sense of the sublime, but we cannot admit any such in- 
fluence in the contemplation even of " The Columbiad." The 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 195 

Quarterlies themselves will not admit it. And yet, what else are 
we to understand by their continual prating about " sustained ef- 
fort ?" Granted that this sustained effort has accomplished an 
epic — let us then admire the effort, (if this be a thing admirable,) 
but certainly not the epic on the effort's account. Common sense, 
in the time to come, may possibly insist upon measuring a work 
of art rather by the object it fulfils, by the impression it makes, 
than by the time it took to fulfil the object, or by the extent of 
" sustained effort" which became necessary to produce the impres- 
sion. The fact is, that perseverance is one thing and genius 
quite another ; nor can all the transcendentalists in Heathendom 
confound them. 



The pieces in the volumes entitled " Twice-Told Tales," are 
now in their third republication, and, of course, are thrice-told. 
Moreover, they are by no means all tales, either in the ordinary 
or in the legitimate understanding of the term. Many of them 
are pure essays ; for example, " Sights from a Steeple," " Sunday 
at Home," "Little Annie's Ramble," "A Rill from the Town- 
Pump," " The Toll-Gatherer's Day," " The Haunted Mind," " The 
Sister Years," " Snow-Flakes," " Night Sketches," and " Foot- 
Prints on the Sea-Shore." I mention these matters chiefly on 
account of their discrepancy with that marked precision and finish 
by which the body of the work is distinguished. 

Of the Essays just named, I must be content to speak in brief. 
They are each and all beautiful, without being characterized by 
the polish and adaptation so visible in the tales proper. A painter 
would at once note their leading or predominant feature, and style 
it repose. There is no attempt at effect. All is quiet, thoughtful, 
subdued. Yet this repose may exist simultaneously with high 
originality of thought ; and Mr. Hawthorne has demonstrated 
the fact. At every turn we meet with novel combinations ; yet 
these combinations never surpass the limits of the quiet. We 
are soothed as we read ; and withal is a calm astonishment that 
ideas so apparently obvious have never occurred or been presented 
to us before. Herein our author differs materially from Lamb or 
Hunt or Hazlitt — who, with vivid originality of manner and ex- 
pression, have less of the true novelty of thought than is gener- 



196 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 

ally supposed, and whose originality, at best, has an uneasy and 
meretricious quaintness, replete with startling effects unfounded 
in nature, and inducing trains of reflection which lead to no sat- 
isfactory result. The Essays of Hawthorne have much of the 
character of Irving, with more of originality, and less of finish ; 
while, compared with the Spectator, they have a vast superiority 
at all points. The Spectator, Mr. Irving, and Hawthorne have in 
common that tranquil and subdued manner which I have chosen 
to denominate repose ; but, in the case of the two former, this 
repose is attained rather by the absence of novel combination, or 
of originality, than otherwise, and consists chiefly in the calm, 
quiet, unostentatious expression of commonplace thoughts, in an 
unambitious, unadulterated Saxon. In them, by strong effort, 
we are made to conceive the absence of all. In the essays before 
me the absence of effort is too obvious to be mistaken, and a 
strong under-current of suggestion runs continuously beneath the 
upper stream of the tranquil thesis. In short, these effusions of 
Mr. Hawthorne are the product of a truly imaginative intellect, 
restrained, and in some measure repressed, by fastidiousness of 
taste, by constitutional melancholy, and by indolence. 

But it is of his tales that I desire principally to speak. The 
tale proper, in my opinion, affords unquestionably the fairest field 
for the exercise of the loftiest talent, which can be afforded by the 
wide domains of mere prose. Were I bidden to say how the 
highest genius could be most advantageously employed for the 
best display of its own powers, I should answer, without hesita- 
tion — in the composition of a rhymed poem, not to exceed in 
length what might be perused in an hour. Within this limit 
alone can the highest order of true poetry exist. I need only 
here say, upon this topic, that, in almost all classes of composition, 
the unity of effect or impression is a point of the greatest impor- 
tance. It is clear, moreover, that this unity cannot be thoroughly 
preserved in productions whose perusal cannot be completed at 
one sitting. We may continue the reading of a prose composi- 
tion, from the very nature of prose itself, much longer than we 
can persevere, to any good purpose, in the perusal of a poem. 
This latter, if truly fulfilling the demands of the poetic sentiment, 
induces an exaltation of the soul which cannot be long sustained. 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 197 

All high excitements are necessarily transient. Thus a long poem 
is a paradox. And, without unity of impression, the deepest ef- 
fects cannot be brought about. Epics were the offspring of an 
imperfect sense of Art, and their reign is no more. A poem too 
brief may produce a vivid, but never an intense or enduring im- 
pression. Without a certain continuity of effort — without a cer- 
tain duration or repetition of purpose — the soul is never deeply 
moved. There must be the dropping of the water upon the 
rock. De Beranger has wrought brilliant things — pungent and 
spirit-stirring — but, like all immassive bodies, they lack momentum, 
and thus fail to satisfy the Poetic Sentiment. They sparkle and 
excite, but, from want of continuity, fail deeply to impress. Ex- 
treme brevity will degenerate into epigrammatism ; but the sin 
of extreme length is even more unpardonable. In medio tutissi- 
mus ibis. 

Were I called upon, however, to designate that class of com- 
position which, next to such a poem as I have suggested, should 
best fulfil the demands of high genius — should offer it the most 
advantageous field of exertion — I should unhesitatingly speak of 
the prose tale, as Mr. Hawthorne has here exemplified it. I al- 
lude to the short prose narrative, requiring from a half-hour to 
one or two hours in its perusal. The ordinary novel is objection- 
able, from its length, for reasons already stated in substance. As 
it cannot be read at one sitting, it deprives itself, of course, of 
.the immense force derivable from totality. Worldly interests in- 
tervening during the pauses of perusal, modify, annul, or coun- 
teract, in a greater or less degree, the impressions of the book. 
But simple cessation in reading would, of itself, be sufficient to 
destroy the true unity. In the brief tale, however, the author is 
enabled to carry out the fulness of his intention, be it what it 
may. During the hour of perusal the soul of the reader is at 
the writer's control. There are no external or extrinsic influences 
— resulting from weariness or interruption. 

A skilful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has 
not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents ; but 
having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single 
effect to be wrought out, he then invents such incidents — he then 
combines such events as may best aid him in establishing this 



198 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 

preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tend not to the 
outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In 
the whole composition there should be no word written, of which 
the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established 
design. And by such means, with such care and skill, a picture 
is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who con- 
templates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction. 
The idea of the tale has been presented unblemished, because un- 
disturbed ; and this is an end unattainable by the novel. Undue 
brevity is just as exceptionable here as in the poem ; but undue 
length is yet more to be avoided. 

We have said that the tale has a point of superiority even over 
the poem. In fact, while the rhythm of this latter is an essential 
aid in the development of the poem's highest idea — the idea of 
the Beautiful — the artificialities of this rhythm are an inseparable 
bar to the development of all points of thought or expression 
which have their basis in Truth. But Truth is often, and in very 
great degree, the aim of the tale. Some of the finest tales are 
tales of ratiocination. Thus the field of this species of composi- 
tion, if not in so elevated a region on the mountain of Mind, is a 
table-land of far vaster extent than the domain of the mere poem. 
Its products are never so rich, but infinitely more numerous, and 
more appreciable by the mass of mankind. The writer of the 
prose tale, in short, may bring to his theme a vast variety of 
modes or inflections of thought and expression — (the ratiocinative, 
for example, the sarcastic or the humorous) which are not only 
antagonistical to the nature of the poem, but absolutely forbidden 
by one of its most peculiar and indispensable adjuncts ; we allude, 
of course, to rhythm. It may be added, here, par parenthese, 
that the author who aims at the purely beautiful in a prose tale is 
laboring at a great disadvantage. For Beauty can be better treat- 
ed in the poem. Not so with terror, or passion, or horror, or a 
multitude of such other points. And here it will be seen how 
full of prejudice are the usual animadversions against those tales 
of effect, many fine examples of which were found in the earlier 
numbers of Blackwood. The impressions produced were wrought 
in a legitimate sphere of action, and constituted a legitimate 
although sometimes an exaggerated interest. They were relished 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 199 

by every man of genius : although there were found many men 
of genius who condemned them without just ground. The true 
critic will but demand that the design intended be accomplished, 
to the fullest extent, by the means most advantageously appli- 
cable. 

We have very few American tales of real merit — we may say, 
indeed, none, with the exception of " The Tales of a Traveller " 
of Washington Irving, and these " Twice-Told Tales " of Mr. 
Hawthorne. Some of the pieces of Mr. John Neal abound in 
vigor and originality ; but in general, his compositions of this 
class are excessively diffuse, extravagant, and indicative of an im- 
perfect sentiment of Art. Articles at random are, now and then, 
met with in our periodicals which might be advantageously com- 
pared with the best effusions of the British Magazines ; but, upon 
the whole, we are far behind our progenitors in this department 
of literature. 

Of Mr. Hawthorne's Tales we would say, emphatically, that 
they belong to the highest region of Art — an Art subservient to 
genius of a very lofty order. We had supposed, with good rea- 
son for so supposing, that he had been thrust into his present 
position by one of the impudent cliques which beset our literature, 
and whose pretensions it is our full purpose to expose at the 
earliest opportunity ; but we have been most agreeably mistaken. 
We know of few compositions which the critic can more honestly 
commend than these " Twice-Told Tales." As Americans, we 
feel proud of the book. 

Mr. Hawthorne's distinctive trait is invention, creation, imagina- 
tion, originality — a trait which, in the literature of fiction, is posi- 
tively worth all the rest. But the nature of the originality, so 
far as regards its manifestation in letters, is but imperfectly under- 
stood. The inventive or original mind as frequently displays 
itself in novelty of tone as in novelty of matter. Mr. Hawthorne 
is original in all points. 

It would be a matter of some difficulty to designate the best 
of these tales ; we repeat that, without exception, they are beau- 
tiful. " Wakefield" is remarkable for the skill with which an old 
idea — a well-known incident — is worked up or discussed. A man 
of whims conceives the purpose of quitting his wife and residing 



200 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 

incognito, for twenty years in her immediate neighborhood. Some- 
thing of this kind actually happened in London. The force of 
Mr. Hawthorne's tale lies in the analysis of the motives which 
must or might have impelled the husbaud to such folly, in the first 
instance, with the possible causes of his perseverance. Upon this 
thesis a sketch of singular power has been constructed. "The Wed- 
ding Knell" is full of the boldest imagination — an imagination fully 
controlled by taste. The most captious critic could find no flaw 
in this production. " The Minister's Black Veil " is a masterly 
composition of which the sole defect is that to the rabble its ex- 
quisite skill will be caviare. The obvious meaning of this article 
will be found to smother its insinuated one. The moral put into 
the mouth of the dying minister will be supposed to convey the 
true import of the narrative ; and that a crime of dark dye, 
(having reference to the " young lady") has been committed, is a 
point which only minds congenial with that of the author will 
perceive. " Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" is vividly original 
and managed most dexterously. "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" 
is exceedingly well imagined, and executed with surpassing ability. 
The artist breathes in every line of it. " The White Old Maid " 
is objectionable, even more than the " Minister's Black Veil," on 
the score of its mysticism. Even with the thoughtful and ana- 
lytic, there will be much trouble in penetrating its entire import. 
" The Hollow of the Three Hills " we would quote in full, had 
we space ; — not as evincing higher talent than any of the other 
pieces, but as affording an excellent example of the author's pecu- 
liar ability. The subject is commonplace. A witch subjects the 
Distant and the Past to the view of a mourner. It has been the 
fashion to describe, in such cases, a mirror in which the images 
of the absent appear ; or a cloud of smoke is made to arise, and 
thence the figures are gradually unfolded. Mr. Hawthorne has 
wonderfully heightened his effect by making the ear, in place of 
the eye, the medium by which the fantasy is conveyed. The head 
of the mourner is enveloped in the cloak of the witch, and within 
its magic folds there arise sounds which have an all-sufficient in- 
telligence. Throughout this article also, the artist is conspicuous 
— not more in positive than in negative merits. Not only is all 
done that should be done, but (what perhaps is an end with more 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 201 

difficulty attained) there is nothing done which should not be. 
Every word tells, and there is not a word which does not tell. 

In " Howe's Masquerade " we observe something which resem- 
bles a plagiarism — but which may be a very flattering coincidence 
of thought. We quote the passage in question. 

With a dark flush of wrath upon his brow they saw the general draw 
his sioord and advance to meet the figure in the cloak before the latter had 
stepped one pace upon the floor. " Villian, unmuffle yourself" cried he, 
" you pass no farther !" The figure, without blenching a hair's breadth from 
the sword which was pointed at his breast, made a solemn pause, and lower- 
ed the cape of the cloak from his face, yet not sufficiently for the spectators 
to catch a glimpse of it. But Sir William Howe had evidently seen enough. 
The sternness of his countenance gave place to a look of wild amazement, 
if not horror, while he recoiled several steps from the figure, and let fall his 
sword upon the floor. — See vol. 2, p. 20. 

The idea here is, that the figure in the cloak is the phantom or 
reduplication of Sir William Howe ; but in an article called 
" William Wilson," one of the " Tales of the Grotesque and Ara- 
besque," we have not only the same idea, but the same idea sim- 
ilarly presented in several respects. We quote two paragraphs, 
which our readers may compare with what has been already given. 
We have italicized, above, the immediate particulars of resemblance. 

The brief moment in which I averted my eyes had been sufficient to pro- 
duce, apparently, a material change in the arrangement at the upper or far- 
ther end of the room. A large mirror, it appeared to me, now stood where 
none had been perceptible before : and as I stepped up to it in extremity of 
terror, mine own image, but with features all pale and dabbled in blood, 
advanced with a feeble and tottering gait to meet me. Thus it appeared I 
say, but was not. It was Wilson, who then stood before me in the agonies 
of dissolution. Not a fine in all the marked and singular lineaments of that 
face which was not even identically mine own. His mask and cloak lay 
where he had thrown them, upon the floor. Vol. 2, p. 51. 

Here, it will be observed that, not only are the two general 
conceptions identical, but there are various points of similarity. 
In each case the figure seen is the wraith or duplication of the be- 
holder. In each case the scene is a masquerade. In each case 
the figure is cloaked. In each, there is a quarrel — that is to say, 
angry words pass between the parties. In each the beholder is 
enraged. In each the cloak and sword fall upon the floor. The 
" villain, unmuffle yourself," of Mr. H. is precisely paralleled by a 
passage at page 56, of " William Wilson." 

I must hasten to conclude this paper with a summary of Mr. 
Hawthorne's merits and demerits. 

9* 



202 ELIZABETH FRIEZE ELLETT. 

He is peculiar and not original — unless in those detailed fancies 
and detached thoughts which his want of general originality will 
deprive of the appreciation due to them, in preventing them for 
ever reaching the public eye. He is infinitely too fond of alle- 
gory, and can never hope for popularity so long as he persists in 
it. This he will not do, for allegory is at war with the whole tone 
of his nature, which disports itself never so well as when escaping 
from the mysticism of his Goodman Browns and White Old 
Maids into the hearty, genial, but still Indian-summer sunshine 
of his Wakefields and Little Annie's Rambles. Indeed, his spirit 
of " metaphor run-mad" is clearly imbibed from the phalanx and 
phalanstery atmosphere in which he has been so long struggling 
for breath. He has not half the material for the exclusiveness of 
authorship that he possesses for its universality. He has the 
purest style, the finest taste, the most available scholarship, the 
most delicate humor, the most touching pathos, the most radiant 
imagination, the most consummate ingenuity ; and with these 
varied good qualities he has done well as a mystic. But is there 
any one of these qualities which should prevent his doing doubly 
as well in a career of honest, upright, sensible, prehensible and 
comprehensible things ? Let him mend his pen, get a bottle of 
visible ink, come out from the Old Manse, cut Mr. Alcott, hang 
(if possible) the editor of " The Dial," and throw out of the win- 
dow to the pigs all his odd numbers of " The North American 
Review." 



ELIZABETH FRIEZE ELLETT. 

Mrs. Ellett, or Ellet, has been long before the public as an 
author. Having contributed largely to the newspapers and other 
periodicals in her youth, she first made her debut on a more com- 
prehensive scale, as the writer of " Teresa Contarini", a five-act 
tragedy, which had considerable merit, but was withdrawn after 
its first night of representation at the Park. This occurred at 
some period previous to the year 1834 ; the precise date I am 
unable to remember. The ill success of the play had little effect 
in repressing the ardor of the poetess, who has since furnished 



AMELIA WELBY. 203 



numerous papers to the Magazines. Her articles are, for the most 
part, in the rifacimento way, and, although no doubt composed in 
good faith, have the disadvantage of looking as if hashed up for 
just so much money as they will bring. The charge of whole- 
sale plagiarism which has been adduced against Mrs. Ellett, I con- 
fess that I have not felt sufficient interest in her works, to inves- 
tigate — and am therefore bound to believe it unfounded. In 
person, short and much inclined to embonpoint. 



AMELIA WELBY. 

Mrs. Amelia Welby has nearly all the imagination of Maria 
del Occidente, with a more refined taste ; and nearly all the passion 
of Mrs. Norton, with a nicer ear, and (what is surprising) equal 
art. Very few American poets are at all comparable with her in 
the true poetic qualities. As for our poetesses (an absurd but ne- 
cessary word), few of them approach her. 

With some modifications, this little poem would do honor to 
any one living or dead : 

The moon within our casement beams, 

Our blue-eyed babe hath dropped to sleep, 

And I have left it to its dreams 
Amid the shadows deep, 

To muse beside the silver tide 

Whose waves are rippling at thy side. 

It is a still and lovely spot 

Where they have laid thee down to rest; 

The white rose and forget-me-not 
Bloom sweetly on thy breast, 

And birds and streams with liquid lull 

Have made the stillness beautiful. 

And softly thro' the forest bars 

Light lovely shapes, on glossy plumes, 
Float ever in, like winged stars, 

Amid the purpling glooms : 
Their sweet songs, borne from tree to tree, 
Thrill the light leaves with melody. 

Alas ! the very path I trace, 

In happier hours thy footsteps made ; 
This spot was once thy resting-place ; 

Within the silent shade 
Thy white hand trained the fragrant bough 
That drops its blossoms o'er me now. 



204 AMELIA WELBY. 



'Twas here at eve we used to rove ; 

'Twas here I breathed my whispered vows, 
And sealed them on thy lips, my love, 

Beneath the apple-boughs. 
Our hearts had melted into one, 
But Death undid what Love had done. 

Alas ! too deep a weight of thought 

Had fill'd thy heart in youth's sweet hour ; 

It seem'd with love and bliss o'erfraught ; 
As fleeting passion-flower 

Unfolding 'neath a southern sky, 

To blossom soon and soon to die. 

Yet in these calm and blooming bowers, 

I seem to see thee still, 
Thy breath seems floating o'er the flowers, 

Thy whisper on the hill ; 
The clear faint star-light and the sea 
Are whispering to my heart of thee. 

No more thy smiles my heart rejoice — 

Yet still I start to meet thine eye, 
And call upon the low sweet voice 

That gives me no reply — 
And list within my silent door 
For the light feet that come no more. 

In a critical mood I would speak of these stanzas thus : — The 
subject has nothing of originality : — A widower muses by the 
grave of his wife. Here then is a great demerit ; for originality 
of theme, if not absolutely first sought, should be sought among 
the first. Nothing is more clear than this proposition — although 
denied by the chlorine critics (the grass-green). The desire of 
the new is an element of the soul. The most exquisite pleasures 
grow dull in repetition. A strain of music enchants. Heard a 
second time it pleases. Heard a tenth, it does not displease. We 
hear it a twentieth, and ask ourselves why we admired. At the 
fiftieth it induces ennui — at the hundredth, disgust. 

Mrs. Welby's theme is, therefore, radically faulty so far as origi- 
nality is concerned ; — but of common themes, it is one of the very 
best among the class passionate. True passion is prosaic — homely. 
Any strong mental emotion stimulates all the mental faculties ; 
thus grief the imagination : — but in proportion as the effect is 
strengthened, the cause surceases. The excited fancy triumphs — 
the grief is subdued — chastened — is no longer grief. In this 
mood we are poetic, and it is clear that a poem now written will 
be poetic in the exact ratio of its dispassion. A passionate poem 



AMELIA WELBY. 205 



is a contradiction in terms. When I say, then, that Mrs. Welby's 
stanzas are good among the class passionate (using the term com- 
monly and falsely applied), I mean that her tone is properly sub- 
dued, and is not so much the tone of passion, as of a gentle and 
melancholy regret, interwoven with a pleasant sense of the natural 
loveliness surrounding the lost in the tomb, and a memory of her 
human beauty while alive. — Elegiac poems should either assume 
this character, or dwell purely on the beauty (moral or physical) 
of the departed — or, better still, utter the notes of triumph. I 
have endeavored to carry out this latter idea in some verses which 
I have called " Lenore." 

Those who object to the proposition — that poetry and passion 
are discordant — would cite Mrs. Welby's poem as an instance of 
a passionate one. It is precisely similar to the hundred others 
which have been cited for like purpose. But it is not passionate ; 
and for this reason (with others having regard to her fine genius) 
it is poetical. The critics upon this topic display an amusing 
ignoratio elenchi. 

Dismissing originality and tone, I pass to the general handling, 
than which nothing could be more pure, more natural, or more 
judicious. The perfect keeping of the various points is admirable 
— and the result is entire unity of impression, or effect. The 
time, a moonlight night ; the locality of the grave ; the passing 
thither from the cottage, and the conclusion of the theme with 
the return to " the silent door ;" the babe left, meanwhile, " to 
its dreams ;" the " white rose and forget-me-not" upon the breast 
of the entombed ; the " birds and streams, with liquid lull, that 
make the stillness beautiful ;" the birds whose songs " thrill the 
light leaves with melody ;" — all these are appropriate and lovely 
conceptions : — only quite unoriginal ; — and (be it observed), the 
higher order of genius should, and will combine the original with 
that which is natural — not in the vulgar sense, (ordinary) — but 
in the artistic sense, which has reference to the general intention 
of Nature. — We have this combination well effected in the lines : 

And softly through the forest bars 

Light lovely shapes, on glossy plumes, 
Float ever in, like winged stars, 

Amid the purpling glooms — 

which are, unquestionably, the finest in the poem. 



206 AMELIA WELBY. 



The reflections suggested by the scene — commencing : 
Alas ! the very path I trace, 

are, also, something more than merely natural, and are richly 
ideal ; especially the cause assigned for the early death ; and " the 
fragrant bough" 

That drops its blossoms o'er me now. 

The two concluding stanzas are remarkable examples of com- 
mon fancies rejuvenated, and etherealized by grace of expression, 
and melody of rhythm. 

The " light lovely shapes" in the third stanza (however beau- 
tiful in themselves), are defective, when viewed in reference to the 
" birds" of the stanza preceding. The topic " birds" is dis- 
missed in the one paragraph, to be resumed in the other. 

" Drops," in the last line of the fourth stanza, is improperly 
used in an active sense. To drop is a neuter verb. An apple 
drops ; we let the apple fall. 

The repetition (" seemed," " seem," " seems,") in the sixth and 
seventh stanzas, is ungraceful ; so also that of " heart," in the last 
line of the seventh, and the first of the eighth. The words 
" breathed" and *' whispered," in the second line of the fifth 
stanza, have a force too nearly identical. " Neath,' 1 just below, 
is an awkward contraction. All contractions are awkward. It is 
no paradox, that the more prosaic the construction of verse, the 
better. Inversions should be dismissed. The most forcible lines 
are the most direct. Mrs. Welby owes three-fourths of her power 
(so far as style is concerned), to her freedom from these vulgar, 
and particularly English errors — elision and inversion. O'er is, 
however, too often used by her in place of over, and 'twas for it 
was. We see instances here. The only inversions, strictly speak- 
ing, are 

The moon within our casement beams, 

and — " Amid the shadows deep." 

The versification throughout, is unusually good. Nothing can 

excel 

And. birds and streams with liquid lull 
Have made the stillness beautiful. . . . 



And sealed them on thy lips, my love, 
Beneath the apple-boughs. . . . 



BAYARD TAYLOR. 207 



or the whole of the concluding stanza, if we leave out of view the 
unpleasant repetition of " And," at the commencement of the 
third and fifth lines, " Thy white hand trained'''' (see stanza the 
fourth) involves four consonants, that unite with difficulty — ndtr — 
and the harshness is rendered more apparent, by the employment 
of the spondee, " hand trained" in place of an iambus. '• Melody" 
is a feeble termination of the third stanza's last line. The syllable 
dy is not full enough to sustain the rhyme. All these endings, 
liberty, property, happity, and the like, however justified by au- 
thority, are grossly objectionable. Upon the whole, there are 
some poets in America (Bryant and Sprague, for example), who 
equal Mrs. Welby in the negative merits of that limited versifica- 
tion which they chiefly affect — the iambic pentameter — but none 
equal her in the richer and positive merits of rhythmical variety, 
conception — invention. They, in the old routine, rarely err. She 
often surprises, and always delights, by novel, rich and accurate 
combination of the ancient musical expressions. 



BAYARD TAYLOR 



I blush to see, in the Literary World, an invidious notice of 
Bayard Taylor's " Rhymes of Travel" What makes the mat- 
ter worse, the critique is from the pen of one who, although un- 
deservedly, holds, himself, some position as a poet : — and what 
makes the matter worst, the attack is anonymous, and (while 
ostensibly commending) most zealously endeavors to damn the 
young writer " with faint praise." In his whole life, the author 
of the criticism never published a poem, long or short, which 
could compare, either in the higher merits, or in the minor 
morals of the Muse, with the worst of Mr. Taylor's compositions. 

Observe the generalizing, disingenuous, patronizing tone : 

It is the empty charlatan, to whom all things are alike impossible, who 
attempts everything. He can do one thing as well as another ; for he can 

really do nothing Mr. Taylor's volume, as we have intimated, is an 

advance upon his previous publication. "We could have wished, indeed, 
something more of restraint in the rhetoric, but, &c, (fee, <fec. 

The concluding sentence, here, is an excellent example of one 
of the most ingeniously malignant of critical ruses — that of con- 



208 BAYARD TAYLOR. 



demning an author, in especial, for what the world, in general, 
feel to be his principal merit. In fact, the " rhetoric " of Mr. 
Taylor, in the sense intended by the critic, is Mr. Taylor's dis- 
tinguishing excellence. He is, unquestionably, the most terse, 
glowing, and vigorous of all our poets, young or old — in point, I 
mean, of expression. His sonorous, well-balanced rhythm puts 
me often in mind of Campbell (in spite of our anonymous friend's 
implied sneer at " mere jingling of rhymes, brilliant and success- 
ful for the moment,'') and his rhetoric in general is of the highest 
order: — By "rhetoric" I intend the mode generally in which 
Thought is presented. Where shall we find more magnificent 
passages than these ? 

First queenly Asia, from the fallen thrones 

Of twice three thousand years, 
Came with the wo a grieving Goddess owns 

Who longs for mortal tears, 
The dust of ruin to her mantle clung 

And dimned her crown of gold, 
While the majestic sorrows of her tongue 

From Tyre to Indus rolled 

Mourn with me, sisters, in my realm of wo 

Whose only glory streams 
From its lost childhood like the Arctic glow 

Which sunless winter dreams. 
In the red desert moulders Babylon 

And the wild serpents hiss 
Echoes in Petrds palaces of stone 

And waste Persepolis. 

Then from her seat, amid the palms embowered 

That shade the Lion-land, 
Swart Africa in dusky aspect towered, 

The fetters on her hand. 
Backward she saw, from out the drear eclipse, 

The mighty Theban years, 
And the deep anguish of her mournful lips 

Interpreted her tears. 

I copy these passages first, because the critic in question has 
copied them, without the slightest appreciation of their grandeur 
— for they are grand ; and secondly, to put the question of " rhe- 
toric " at rest. No artist who reads them will deny that they are 
the perfection of skill in their way. But thirdly, I wish to call 
attention to the glowing imagination evinced in the lines italicized. 
My very soul revolts at such efforts, (as the one I refer to,) to de- 
preciate such poems as Mr. Taylor's. Is there no honor — no 



HENRY B. HIRST. 209 



chivalry left in the land ? Are our most deserving writers to be 
forever sneered down, or hooted down, or damned down with 
faint praise, by a set of men who possess little other ability than 
that which assures temporary success to them, in common with 
Swaim's Panacea or Morrison's pills ? The fact is, some person 
should write, at once, a Magazine paper exposing — ruthlessly ex- 
posing, the dessous de cartes of our literary affairs. He should 
show how and why it is that the ubiquitous quack in letters can 
always " succeed," while genius, (which implies self-respect, with 
a scorn of creeping and crawling,) must inevitably succumb. He 
should point out the " easy arts " by which any one, base enough 
to do it, can get himself placed at the very head of American 

Letters by an article in that magnanimous journal, " The 

Review." He should explain, too, how readily the same work 
can be induced (as in the case of Simms,) to villify, and vilify 
personally, any one not a Northerner, for a trifling " considera- 
tion." In fact, our criticism needs a thorough regeneration, and 
must have it. 



HENRY B. HIRST. 

Mr. Henry B. Hirst, of Philadelphia, has, undoubtedly, some 
merit as a poet. His sense of beauty is keen, although indis- 
criminative ; and his versification would be unusually effective but 
for the spirit of hyperism, or exaggeration, which seems to be the 
ruling feature of the man. He is always sure to overdo a good 
thing ; and, in especial, he insists upon rhythmical effects until 
they cease to have any effect at all — or until they give to his 
compositions an air of mere oddity. His principal defect, how- 
ever, is a want of constructive ability ; — he can never put together 
a story intelligibly. His chief sin is imitativeness. He never 
writes anything which does not immediately put us in mind of 
something that we have seen better written before. Not to do 
him injustice, however, I here quote two stanzas from a little 
poem of his, called " The Owl." The passages italicized are highly 
imaginative : 



210 HENRY B. HIRST. 



When twilight fades and evening falls 

Alike on tree and tower, 
And Silence, like a pensive maid, 

Walks round each slumbering bower : 
When fragrant flowerets fold their leaves, 

And all is still in sleep, 
The horned owl on moonlit wing 

Flies from the donjon keep. 

And he calls aloud — " too- whit ! too-whoo 1" 

And the nightingale is still, 
And the pattering step of the hurrying hare 

Is hushed upon the hill ; 
And he crouches low in the dewy grass 

As the lord of the night goes by, 
Not with a loudly whirring wing 

But like a lady's sigh. 

No one, save a poet at heart, could have conceived these images ; 
and they are embodied with much skill. In the " pattering step," 
&c, we have an admirable " echo of sound to sense," and the 
title, " lord of the night," applied to the owl, does Mr. Hirst in- 
finite credit — if the idea be original with Mr. Hirst. Upon the 
whole, the poems of this author are eloquent (or perhaps elocu- 
tionary) rather than poetic — but he has poetical merit, beyond a 
doubt — merit which his enemies need not attempt to smother by 
any mere ridicule thrown upon the man. 

To my face, and in the presence of my friends, Mr. H. has al- 
ways made a point of praising my own poetical efforts ; and, for 
this reason, I should forgive him, perhaps, the amiable weakness 
of abusing them anonymously. In a late number of " The Phil- 
adelphia Saturday Courier," he does me the honor of attributing 
to my pen a ballad called " Ulalume," which has been going the 
rounds of the press, sometimes with my name to it ; sometimes 
with Mr. Willis's, and sometimes with no name at all. Mr. Hirst 
insists upon it that i~ wrote it, and it is just possible that he knows 
more about the matter than I do myself. Speaking of a particu- 
lar passage, he says : 

We have spoken of the mystical appearance of Astarte as a fine touch of 
Art. This is borrowed, and from the first canto of Hirst's Endymion — [The 
reader will observe that the anonymous critic has no personal acquaintance 
whatever with Mr. Hirst, but takes care to call him " Hirst " simply, ju9t as 
we say " Homer."] — from Hirst's " Endymion," published years since in " The 
Southern Literary Messenger " : 



HENRY B. HIRST. 211 



Slowly Endymion bent, the light Elysian 
Flooding his figure. Kneeling on one knee, 
He loosed his sandals, lea 

And lake and woodland glittering on his vision — 
A fairy landscape, bright and beautiful, 
With Venus at her full. 

Astarte is another name for Venus ; and when we remember that Diana 
is about to descend to Endymion — that the scene which is about to follow is 
one of love — that Venus is the star of love — and that Hirst, by introducing 
it as he does, shadows out his story exactly as Mr. Poe introduces his Astarte 
— the plagiarism of idea becomes evident. 

Now I really feel ashamed to say that, as yet, I have not pe- 
rused " Endymion " — for Mr. Hirst will retort at once — " That is 
no fault of mine — you should have read it — I gave you a copy — 
and, besides, you had no business to fall asleep when I did you 
the honor of reading it to you." Without a word of excuse, 
therefore, I will merely copy the passage in " Ulalume " which 
the author of " Endymion " says I purloined from the lines quoted 

above : 

And now, as the night was senescent 

And star-dials pointed to morn — 

As the star-dials hinted of morn — 
At the end of my path a liquescent 

And nebulous lustre was born, 
Out of which a miraculous crescent 

Arose with a duplicate horn — 
Astarte's bediamonded crescent, 

Distinct with its duplicate horn. 

Now, I may be permitted to regret — really to regret — that I 
can find no resemblance between the two passages in question ; 
for malo cum Platone errare, dfcc, and to be a good imitator of 
Henry B. Hirst, is quite honor enough for me. 

In the meantime, here is a passage from another little ballad 
of mine, called " Lenore," first published in 1830 : 

How shall the ritual, then, be read — the requiem how be sung 
By you — by yours, the evil eye — by yours, the slanderous tongue 
That did to death the innocence that died, and died so young ? 

And here is a passage from " The Penance of Poland" by 
Henry B. Hirst, published in " Graham's Magazine " for January, 
1848: 

Mine the tongue that wrought this evil — mine the false and slanderous tongue 
That done to death the Lady Gwineth — Oh, my soul i3 sadly wrung ! 
" Demon ! devil," groaned the warrior, " devil of the evil eye /" 

Now my objection to all this is not that Mr. Hirst has appro- 
priated my property — (I am fond of a nice phrase) — but that he 



212 ROBERT WALSH. 



has not done it so cleverly as I could wish. Many a lecture, on 
literary topics, have I given Mr. H. ; and I confess that, in gen- 
eral, he has adopted my advice so implicitly that his poems, upon 
the whole, are little more than our conversations done into verse. 

" Steal, dear Endymion," I used to say to him — " for very well 
do I know you can't help it ; and the more you put in your book 
that is not your own, why the better your book will be : — but be 
cautious and steal with an air. In regard to myself — you need 
give yourself no trouble about me. I shall always feel honored 
in being of use to you ; and provided you purloin my poetry in 
a reputable manner, you are quite welcome to just as much of it 
as you (who are a very weak little man) can conveniently carry 
away." 

So far — let me confess — Mr. Hirst has behaved remarkably 
well in largely availing himself of the privilege thus accorded : — 
but, in the case now at issue, he stands in need of some gentle 
rebuke. I do not object to his stealing my verses ; but I do ob- 
ject to his stealing them in bad grammar. My quarrel with him 
is not, in short, that he did this thing, but that he has went and 
done did it. 



ROBERT WALSH. 

Having read Mr. Walsh's " Didactics," with much attention 
and pleasure, I am prepared to admit that he is one of the finest 
writers, one of the most accomplished scholars, and when not in 
too great a hurry, one of the most accurate thinkers in the coun- 
try. Yet had I never seen this work I should never have enter- 
tained these opinions. Mr. Walsh has been peculiarly an anony- 
mous writer, and has thus been instrumental in cheating himself 
of a great portion of that literary renown which is most unequivo- 
cally his due. I have been not unfrequently astonished in the 
perusal of this book, at meeting with a variety of well known and 
highly esteemed acquaintances, for whose paternity I had been 
accustomed to give credit where I now find it should not have 
been given. Among these I may mention in especial the very 
excellent Essay on the acting of Kean, entitled " Notices of Kearfs 



ROBERT WALSH. 213 



principal performances during his first season in Philadelphia" 
to be found at page 146, volume I. I have often thought of the 
unknown author of this Essay, as of one to whom I might speak, 
if occasion should at any time be granted me, with a perfect cer- 
tainty of being understood. I have looked to the article itself as 
to a fair oasis in the general blankness and futility of our custom- 
ary theatrical notices. I read it with that thrill of pleasure with 
which I always welcome my own long-cherished opinions, when I 
meet them unexpectedly in the language of another. How abso- 
lute is the necessity now daily growing, of rescuing our stage criti- 
cism from the control of illiterate mountebanks, and placing it in 
the hands of gentlemen and scholars ! 

The paper on Collegiate Education, is much more than a suffi- 
cient reply to that Essay in the Old Bachelor of Mr. Wirt, in 
which the attempt is made to argue down colleges as seminaries 
for the young. Mr. Walsh's article does not uphold Mr. Barlow's 
plan of a National University — a plan which is assailed by the 
Attorney General — but comments upon some errors in point of 
fact, and enters into a brief but comprehensive examination of the 
general subject. He maintains with undeniable truth, that it is 
illogical to deduce -arguments against universities which are to 
exist at the present day, from the inconveniences found to be con- 
nected with institutions formed in the dark ages — institutions 
similar to our own in but few respects, modelled upon the princi- 
ples and prejudices of the times, organized with a view to particu- 
lar ecclesiastical purposes, and confined in their operations by an 
infinity of Gothic and perplexing regulations. He thinks, (and I 
believe he thinks with a great majority of our well educated fel- 
low citizens,) that in the case either of a great national institute 
or of State universities, nearly all the difficulties so much insisted 
upon will prove a series of mere chimeras — that the evils appre- 
hended might be readily obviated, and the acknowledged benefits 
uninterruptedly secured. He denies, very justly, the assertion of the 
Old Bachelor — that, in the progress of society, funds for collegiate 
establishments will no doubt be accumulated, independently of 
government, when their benefits are evident, and a necessity for 
them felt — and that the rich who have funds will, whenever 
strongly impressed with the necessity of so doing, provide, either 



214 ROBERT WALSH. 



by associations or otherwise, proper seminaries for the education 
of their children. He shows that these assertions are contradic- 
tory to experience, and more particularly to the experience of the 
State of Virginia, where, notwithstanding the extent of private 
opulence, and the disadvantages under which the community so 
long labored from a want of regular and systematic instruction, it 
was the government which was finally compelled, and not private 
societies which were induced, to provide establishments for effect- 
ing the great end. He says, (and therein we must all fully agree 
with him,) that Virginia may consider herself fortunate in follow- 
ing the example of all the enlightened nations of modern times 
rather than in hearkening to the counsels of the Old Bachelor. 
He dissents, (and who would not?) from the allegation, that " the 
most eminent men in Europe, particularly in England, have re- 
ceived their education neither at public schools or universities," 
and shows that the very reverse may be affirmed — that on the 
continent of Europe by far the greater number of its great names 
have been attached to the rolls of its universities — and that in 
England a vast majority of those minds which we have reverenced 
so long — the Bacons, the Newtons, the Barrows, the Clarkes, the 
Spencers, the Miltons, the Drydens, the Addisons, the Temples, 
the Hales, the Clarendons, the Mansfields, Chatham, Pit, Fox, 
Wyndham, &c, were educated among the venerable cloisters of 
Oxford or of Cambridge. He cites the Oxford Prize Essays, so 
well known even in America, as direct evidence of the energetic 
ardor in acquiring knowledge brought about through the means 
of British Universities, and maintains that " when attention is 
given to the subsequent public stations and labors of most of the 
writers of these Essays, it will be found that they prove also the 
ultimate practical utility of the literary discipline of the colleges 
for the students and the nation." He argues, that were it even 
true that the greatest men have not been educated in public 
schools, the fact would have little to do with the question of 
their efficacy in the instruction of the mass of mankind. Great 
men cannot be created — and are usually independent of all parti- 
cular schemes of education. Public seminaries are best adapted 
to the generality of cases. He concludes with observing that the 
course of study pursued at English Universities, is more liberal by 



SEBA SMITH. 215 



far than we are willing to suppose it — that it is, demonstrably, 
the best, inasmuch as regards the preference given to classical and 
mathematical knowledge — and that upon the whole it would be 
an easy matter, in transferring to America the general principles 
of those institutions, to leave them their obvious errors, while we 
avail ourselves as we best may, of their still more obvious virtues 
and advantages. 

The only paper in the Didactics, to which I have any decided 
objection, is a tolerably long article on the subject of Phrenology, 

entitled " Memorial of the Phrenological Society of to the 

Honorable the Congress of sitting at ." Considered as 

a specimen of mere burlesque, the Memorial is well enough — but 
I am sorry to see the energies of a scholar and an editor (who 
should be, if he be not, a man of metaphysical science,) so wicked- 
ly employed as in any attempt to throw ridicule upon a question, 
(however much maligned, or however apparently ridiculous,) 
whose merits he has never examined, and of whose very nature, 
history, and assumptions, he is most evidently ignorant. Mr. 
Walsh is either ashamed of this article now, or he will have plen- 
tiful reason to be ashamed of it hereafter. 



SEBA SMITH. 

What few notices we have seen of this poem,* speak of it as the 
production of Mrs. Seba Smith. To be sure, gentlemen may be 
behind the scenes, and know more about the matter than we do. 
They may have some private reason for understanding that black 
is white — some reason into which we, personally, are not initiated. 
But, to ordinary perception, " Powhatan" is the composition of 
Seba Smith, Esquire, of Jack Downing memory, and not of his 
wife. Seba Smith is the name upon the title-page ; and the per- 
sonal pronoun which supplies the place of this well-known prseno- 
men and cognomen in the preface, is, we are constrained to say, of 
the masculine gender. " The author of Powhatan," — thus, for 

* Powhatan; a Metrical Romance, in Seven Cantos. By Seba Smith. 
New York : Harper and Brothers. 



216 SEBA SMITH. 



example, runs a portion of the prolegomena — " does not presume 
to claim for his production the merit of good and genuine poetry, 
nor does he pretend to assign it a place in the classes or forms into 
which poetry is divided" — in all which, by the way, he is decidedly 
right. But can it be that no gentleman has read even so far as 
the Preface of the book ? Can it be that the critics have had no 
curiosity to creep into the adyta — into the inner mysteries of this 
temple ? If so, they are decidedly right too. 

" Powhatan" is handsomely bound. Its printing is clear beyond 
comparison. Its paper is magnificent, and we undertake to say 
(for we have read it through with the greatest attention) that there 
is not a single typographical error in it, from one end to the other. 
Further than this, in the way of commendation, no man with both 
brains and conscience should proceed. In truth a more absurdly 
fiat affair— for flat is the only epithet which applies in this case 
— was never before paraded to the world, with so grotesque an 
air of bombast and assumption. 

To give some ide of the tout ensemble of the book — we have 
first a Dedication to the " Young People of the United States," 
in which Mr. Jack Downing lives, in " the hope that he may do 
some good in his day and generation, by adding something to the 
sources of rational enjoyment and mental culture" Next, we 
have a Preface, occupying four pages, in which, quoting his pub- 
lishers, the author tells us that poetry is a " very great bore, and 
won't sell" — a thing which cannot be denied in certain cases, but 
which Mr. Downing denies in his own. " It may be true," he 
says, " of endless masses of words, that are poured forth from the 
press, under the name of poetry" — but it is not true " of genuine 
poetry — of that which is worthy of the name" — in short, we 
presume he means to say it is not in the least little bit true of 
" Powhatan ;" with regard to whose merits he wishes to be tried, 
not by the critics (we fear, in fact, that here it is the critics who 
will be tried,) but by the common taste of common readers" — all 
which ideas are common enough, to say no more. 

We have next, a " Sketch of the Character of Powhatan," which 
is exceedingly interesting and commendable, and which is taken 
from Burk's " History of Virginia :" — four pages more. Then 
comes a Proem — four pages more — forty-eight lines — twelve lines 



SEBA SMITH. 217 



to a page — in which all that we can understand, is something 
about the name of " Powhatan" 

Descending to a distant age, 
Embodied forth on the deathless page 

of the author — that is to say, of Jack Downing, Esquire. We 
have now one after the other, Cantos one, two, three, four, five, 
six, and seven — each subdivided into Parts, by means of Roman 
numerals — some of these Parts comprehending as many as six 
lines — upon the principle, we presume, of packing up precious 
commodities in small bundles. The volume then winds up with 
Notes, in proportion of three to one, as regards the amount of text, 
and taken, the most of them, from Burk's Virginia, as before. 

It is very difficult to keep one's countenance when reviewing 
such a work as this ; but we will do our best, for the truth's sake, 
and put on as serious a face as the case will admit. 

The leading fault of " Powhatan," then, is precisely what its 
author supposes to be its principal merit. " It would be difficult," 
he says, in that pitiable preface, in which he has so exposed him- 
self, " to find a poem that embodies more truly the spirit of his- 
tory, or indeed that follows out more faithfully many of its de- 
tails." It would, indeed ; and we are very sorry to say it. The truth 
is, Mr. Downing has never dreamed of any artistic arrangement of 
his facts. He has gone straight forward, like a blind horse, and 
turned neither to the one side nor to the other, for fear of stum- 
bling. But he gets them all in — every one of them — the facts 
we mean. Powhatan never did anything in his life, we are sure, 
that Mr. Downing has not got in his poem. He begins at the 
beginning, and goes on steadily to the end — painting away at his 
story, just as a sign-painter at a sign ; beginning at the left hand 
side of his board, and plastering through to the right. But he 
has omitted one very ingenious trick of the sign-painter. He has 
forgotten to write under his portrait — " this is a pig, v and thus 
there is some danger of mistaking it for an opossum. 

But we are growing scurrilous, in spite of our promise, and 
must put on a sober visage once more. It is a hard thing, how- 
ever, when we have to read and write about such doggrel 
as this : 

Vol. III.— 10. 



218 SEBA SMITH. 



But bravely to the river's brink 

I led my -warrior train, 
And face to face,, each glance they sent, 

"We sent it back again. 
Their werowance looked stern at me, 

And I looked stern at him, 
And all my warriors clasped their bows, 

And nerved each heart and limb. 
I raised my heavy war-club high, 

And swung it fiercely round, 
And shook it towards the shallop's side, 

Then laid it on the ground. 
And then the lighted calumet 

I offered to their view, 
And thrice I drew the sacred smoke, 

And toward the shallop blew, 
And as the curling vapor rose, 

Soft as a spirit prayer, 
I saw the pale-face leader wave 

A white flag in the air. 
Then launching out their painted skiff 

They boldly came to land, 
And spoke us many a kindly word, 

And took us by the hand. 
Presenting rich and shining gifts, 

Of copper, brass, and beads, 
To show that they were men like us, 

And prone to generous deeds. 
"We held a long and friendly talk, 

Inquiring whence they came, 
And who the leader of their band 

And what their country's name. 
And how their mighty shallop moved 

Across the boundless sea, 
And why they touched our great king's land 
Without his liberty. 

It won't do. We cannot sing to this tune any longer. We 
greatly prefer, 

John Gilpin was a gentleman 

Of credit and renown, 
A train-band captain eke was he 
Of famous London town. 
Or— 

Old Grimes is dead, that good old man, 

"We ne'er shall see him more, 
He used to wear an over-coat 
All buttoned down before — 

or lines to that effect — we wish we could remember the words. 
The part, however, about 

Their werowance look'd stern at me, 

And I looked stern at him — 



MARGARET MILLER AND LUCRETIA M. DAVIDSON. 219 

is not quite original with Mr. Downing — is it ? We merely ask 

for information. Have we not heard something about 

An old crow sitting on a hickory limb, 
Who winked at me, and I winked at liim. 

The simple truth is, that Mr. Downing never committed a 
greater mistake in his life than when he fancied himself a poet, 
even in the ninety-ninth degree. We doubt whether he could 
distinctly state the difference between an epic and an epigram. 
And it will not do for him to appeal from the critic to common 
readers — because we assure him his book is a very wncommon 
book. We never saw any one so uncommonly bad — nor one 
about whose parturition so uncommon a fuss has been made, so 
little to the satisfaction of common sense. Your poem is a curios- 
ity, Mr. Jack Downing ; your " Metrical Romance" is not worth 
a single half sheet of the paste-board upon which it is printed. 
This is our humble and honest opinion ; and, although honest 
opinions are not very plentiful just now, you can have ours at what 
it is worth. But we wish, before parting, to ask you one question. 
What do you mean by that motto from Sir Philip Sidney, upon 
the title-page ? "He cometh to you with a tale that holdeth 
children from play, and old men from the chimney-corner." What 
do you mean by it, we say. Either you cannot intend to apply 
it to the " tale''' of Powhatan, or else all the " old men" in your 
particular neighborhood must be very old men ; and all the " lit- 
tle children" a set of dunderheaded little ignoramuses. 



MARGARET MILLER AND LUCRETIA MARIA 
DAVIDSON. 

The name of Lucretia Davidson is familiar to all readers of 
poetry. Dying at the early age of seventeen, she has been ren- 
dered famous not less, and certainly not more, by her own preco- 
cious genius than by three memorable biographies — one by 
President Morse, of the American Society of Arts, another by Miss 
Sedgwick, and a third by Robert Southey. Mr. Irving had 
formed an acquaintance with some of her relatives, and thus, 
while in Europe, took great interest in all that was said or written 



220 MARGARET MILLER AND LUCRETIA M. DAVIDSON. 

of his young countrywoman. Upon his return to America, he 
called upon Mrs. Davidson, and then, in 1833, first saw the sub- 
ject of the memoir now before us,* — a fairy-like child of eleven. 
Three years afterwards he met with her again, and then found 
her in delicate health. Three years having again elapsed, the 
MSS. which form the basis of the present volume, were placed in 
his hands by Mrs. Davidson, as all that remained of her daughter. 

Few books have interested us more profoundly. Yet the in- 
terest does not appertain solely to Margaret. " In fact the narra- 
tive," says Mr. Irving, " will be found almost as illustrative of 
the character of the mother as of the child ; they were singularly 
identified in taste, feeling, and pursuits ; tenderly entwined to- 
gether by maternal and filial affection, they reflected an inex- 
pressibly touching grace and interest upon each other by this 
holy relationship, and, to my mind it would be marring one of 
the most beautiful and affecting groups in modern literature, to 
sunder them." In these words the biographer conveys no more 
than a just idea of the exquisite loveliness of the picture here pre- 
sented to view. 

The MSS. handed Mr. Irving, have been suffered, in a great 
measure, to tell their own thrilling tale. There has been no inju- 
dicious attempt at mere authorship. The compiler has confined 
himself to chronological arrangement of his memoranda, and to 
such simple and natural comments as serve to bind rather than to 
illustrate where no illustration was needed. These memoranda 
consist of relations by Mrs. Davidson of the infantine peculiarities 
of her daughter, and of her habits and general thoughts in more 
matured life, intermingled with letters from the young poetess to 
intimate friends. There is also a letter from the bereaved mother 
to Miss Sedgwick, detailing the last moments of the child — a let- 
ter so full of all potent nature, so full of minute beauty, and truth 
and pathos, that to read it without tears would be to prove one's 
self less than human. 

The " Poetical Remains" of this young creature, who perished 
(of consumption) in her sixteenth year, occupy about two hundred 
pages of a somewhat closely printed octavo. The longest poem 

* Biography and Poetical Remains of the late Margaret Miller Davidson. 
By Washington Irving. Philadelphia : Lea and Blanchard. 



i 



MARGARET MILLER AND LUCRETIA M. DAVIDSON. 221 

is called " Lenore," and consists of some two thousand lines, va- 
rying in metre from the ordinary octo-syllabic, to the four-footed, 
or twelve-syllabled iambic. The story, which is a romantic love- 
tale, not ill-conceived in its incidents, is told with a skill which 
might put more practised bards to the blush, and with ocasional 
bursts of the truest poetic fire. But although as indicative of her 
future power, it is the most important, as it is the longest of her 
productions, yet, as a whole, it is not equal to some of her shorter 
compositions. It was written not long before her death, at the 
age of fifteen, and (as we glean from the biography) after patient 
reflection, with much care, and with a high resolve to do some- 
thing for fame. As the work of so mere a child, it is unquestion- 
ably wonderful. Its length, viewed in connexion with its keep- 
ing, its unity, its adaptation, and completeness, will impress the 
metaphysician most forcibly, when surveying the capacities of its 
author. Powers are here brought into play which are the last to 
be matured. For fancy we might have looked, and for the lower 
evidences of skill in a perfect versification and the like, but hardly 
for what we see in Lenore. 

Yet remarkable as this production is, from the pen of a girl of 
fifteen, it is by no means sck incomprehensible as are some of the 
shorter pieces. We have known instances — rarely, to be sure — 
but still we have known instances when finer poems in every re- 
spect than Lenore have been written by children of as immature 
age — but we look around us in vain for anything composed at 
eight years, which can bear comparison with the lines subjoined : 

TO MAMMA. 

Farewell, dear mother, for a while 
I must resign thy plaintive smile ; 
May angels watch thy couch of wo, 
And joys unceasing round thee flow. 

May the almighty Father spread 
His sheltering wings above thy head. 
It is not long that we must part, 
Then cheer thy downcast drooping heart. 

Remember, oh ! remember me, 
Unceasing is my love for thee ! 
When death shall sever earthly ties, 
When thy loved form all senseless lies, 



222 MARGARET MILLER AND LUCRETIA M DAVIDSON. 

Oh ! that my form with thine could flee, 
And roam through wide eternity ; 
Could tread with thee the courts of heaven, 
And count the brilliant stars of even. 

Nor are these stanzas, written at ten, in any degree less re- 
markable — 

MY NATIVE LAKE. 

Thy verdant banks, thy lucid stream, 
Lit by the sun's resplendent beam, 
Reflect each bending tree so light 
Upon thy bounding bosom bright. 
Could I but see thee once again, 
My own, my beautiful Champlain ! 

The little isles that deck thy breast, 

And calmly on thy bosom rest, 

How often, in my childish glee, 

I've sported round them, bright and free ! 

Could I but see thee once again, 

My own, my beautiful Champlain ! 

How oft I've watch'd the fresh'ning shower 
Bending the summer tree and flower, 
And felt my little heart beat high 
As the bright rainbow graced the sky. 
Could I but see thee once again, 
My own, my beautiful Champlain 1 

And shall I never see thee more, 
My native lake, my much-loved shore, 
And must I bid a long adieu, 
My dear, my infant home, to you ? 
Shall I not see thee once again, 
My own, my beautiful Champlain ? 

In the way of criticism upon these extraordinary compositions, 
Mr. Irving has attempted little, and, in general, he seems more 
affected by the loveliness and the purity of the child than even by 
the genius she has evinced — however highly he may have esti- 
mated this latter. In respect, however, to a poem entitled " My 
Sister Lucretia," — he thus speaks — " We have said that the ex- 
ample of her sister Lucretia was incessantly before her, and no 
better proof can be given of it than in the following lines, which 
breathe the heavenly aspirations of her pure young spirit, in 
strains to us quite unearthly. We may have read poetry more 
artificially perfect in its structure, but never any more truly 
divine in its inspiration." The nature of inspiration is disputable 



MARGARET MILLER AND LUCRETIA M. DAVIDSON". 223 

— and we will not pretend to assert that Mr. .Irving is in the 
wrong. His words, however, in their hyperbole, do wrong to his 
subject, and would be hyperbole still, if applied to the most ex- 
alted poets of all time. 



The analogies of Nature are universal ; and just as the most 
rapidly growing herbage is the most speedy in its decay — just as 
the ephemera struggles to perfection in a day only to perish in 
that day's decline — so the mind is early matured only to be early 
in its decadence ; and when we behold in the eye of infancy the 
soul of the adult, it is but indulging in a day dream to hope for 
any farther proportionate development. Should the prodigy sur- 
vive to ripe age, a mental imbecility, not far removed from idiocy 
itself, is too frequently the result. From this rule the exceptions 
are rare indeed ; but it should be observed that, when the excep- 
tion does occur, the intellect is of a Titan cast even to the days 
of its extreme senility, and acquires renown not in one, but in all 
the wide fields of fancy and of reason. 

Lucretia Maria Davidson,* the elder of the two sweet sisters 
who have acquired so much of fame prematurely, had not, like 
Margaret, an object of poetical emulation in her own family. In 
her genius, be it what it may, there is more of self-dependence — 
less of the imitative. Her mother's generous romance of soul 
may have stimulated, but did not instruct. Thus, although she 
has actually given less evidence of power (in our opinion) than 
Margaret — less written proof — still its indication must be consider- 
ed at higher value. Both perished at sixteen. Margaret, we 
think, has left the better poems — certainly, the more precocious — 
while Lucretia evinces more unequivocally the soul of the poet. 
We have quoted in full some stanzas composed by the former at 
eight years of age. The latter's earliest effusions are dated at 
fourteen. Yet the first compositions of the two seem to us of 
nearly equal merit. 

The most elaborate production of Margaret is " Lenore." It 

* Poetical Remains of the late Maria Davidson, Collected and Arranged 
by her Mother ; with a Biography by Miss Sedgwick. Lea & Blanchard : 
Philadelphia. 



224 MARGARET MILLER AND LUCRETIA M. DAVIDSON. 

was written not long before her death, at the age of fifteen, after 
patient reflection, with much care, and with all that high resolve 
to do something for fame with which the reputation of her sister 
had inspired her. Under such circumstances, and with the early 
poetical education which she could not have failed to receive, we 
confess that, granting her a trifle more than average talent, it 
would have been rather a matter for surprise had she produced a 
worse, than had she produced a better poem than " Lenore." 
Its length, viewed in connexion with its keeping, its unity, its 
adaptation, and its completeness (and all these are points having 
reference to artistical knowledge and perseverance) will impress 
the critic more favorably than its fancy, or any other indication 
of poetic power. In all the more important qualities we have 
seen far — very far finer poems than " Lenore " written at a much 
earlier age than fifteen. 

" Amir Khan," the longest and chief composition of Lucretia, 
has been long known to the reading public. Partly through 
Professor Morse, yet no doubt partly through their own merits, 
the poems found their way to Southey, who, after his peculiar 
fashion, and not unmindful of his previous furores in the case of 
Kirke White, Chatterton, and others of precocious ability, or at 
least celebrity, thought proper to review them in the Quarterly. 
This was at a period when we humbled ourselves, with a subser- 
viency which would have been disgusting had it not been ludi- 
crous, before the crudest critical dicta of Great Britain. It pleased 
the laureate, after some squibbing in the way of demurrer, to 
speak of the book in question as follows : — " In these poems there 
is enough of originality, enough of aspiration, enough of con- 
scious energy, enough of growing power to warrant any expecta- 
tions, however sanguine, which the patrons and the friends and 
parents of the deceased could have formed." Meaning nothing, 
or rather meaning anything, as we choose to interpret it, this sen- 
tence was still sufficient (and in fact the half of it would have 
been more than sufficient) to establish upon an immoveable basis 
the reputation of Miss Davidson in America. Thenceforward 
any examination of her true claims to distinction was considered 
little less than a declaration of heresy. Nor does the awe of the 
laureate's ipse dixit seem even yet to have entirely subsided. 



MARGARET MILLER AND LUCRETIA M. DAVIDSON. 225 

■ The genius of Lucretia Davidson," says Miss Sedgwick, " has 
had the meed of far more authoritative praise than ours ; the 
following tribute is from the London Quarterly Review." What 
this lady — for whom and for whose opinion we still have the 
highest respect — can mean by calling the praise of Southey 
" more authoritative " than her own, is a point we shall not pause 
to determine. Her praise is at least honest, or we hope so. Its 
"authority" is in exact proportion with each one's estimate of 
her judgment. But it would not do to say all this of the author 
of " Thalaba." It would not do to say it in the hearing of men 
who are sane, and who, being sane, have perused the leading arti- 
cles in the " London Quarterly Review " during the ten or fifteen 
years prior to that period when Robert Southey, having concocted 
" The Doctor," took definite leave of his wits. In fact, for any- 
thing that we have yet seen or heard to the contrary, the opinion 
of the laureate, in respect to the poem of " Amir Khan," is a 
matter still only known to Robert Southey. But were it known 
to all the world, as Miss Sedgwick supposes with so charmingly 
innocent an air ; we mean to say were it really an honest opinion, 
— this " authoritative praise," — still it would be worth, in the eyes 
of every sensible person, only just so much as it demonstrates, or 
makes a show of demonstrating. Happily the day has gone by, 
and we trust forever, when men are content to swear blindly by 
the words of a master, poet-laureate though he be. But what 
Southey says of the poem is at best an opinion and no more. 
What Miss Sedgwick says of it is very much in the same predica- 
ment. " Amir Khan," she writes, " has long been before the pub- 
lic, but we think it has suffered from a general and very natural 
distrust of precocious genius. The versification is graceful, the 
story beautifully developed, and the orientalism well sustained. 
We think it would not have done discredit to our most popular 
poets in the meridian of their fame ; as the production of a girl 
of fifteen it seems prodigious." The cant of a kind heart when 
betraying into error a naturally sound judgment, is perhaps the 
only species of cant in the world not altogether contemptible. 

We yield to no one in warmth of admiration for the personal 
character of these sweet sisters, as that character is depicted by 
the mother, by Miss Sedgwick, and by Mr. Irving. But it costs 

10* 



226 MARGARET MILLER AND LUCRETIA M. DAVIDSON. 

us no effort to distinguish that which, in our heart, is love of their 
worth, from that which, in our intellect, is appreciation of their 
poetic ability. With the former, as critic, we have nothing to do. 
The distinction is one too obvious for comment ; and its observation 
would have spared us much twaddle on the part of the commen- 
tators upon " Amir Khan." 

We will endeavor to convey, as concisely as possible, some idea 
of this poem as it exists, not in the fancy of the enthusiastic, but 
in fact. It includes four hundred and forty lines. The metre is 
chiefly octo-syllabic. At one point it is varied by a casual intro- 
duction of an anapaest in the first and second foot ; at another (in 
a song) by seven stanzas of four lines each, rhyming alternately ; 
the metre anapaestic of four feet alternating with three. The ver- 
sification is always good, so far as the meagre written rules of our 
English prosody extend ; that is to say, there is seldom a syllable 
too much or too little ; but long and short syllables are placed at 
random, aud a crowd of consonants sometimes renders a line un- 
pronounceable. For example : 

He loved, — and oh, he loved so well 
That sorrow scarce dared break the spell. 

At times, again, the rhythm lapses, in the most inartistical man- 
ner, and evidently without design, from one species to another al- 
together incongruous ; as, for example, in the sixth line of these 
eight, where the tripping anapaestic stumbles into the demure 
iambic, recovering itself, even more awkwardly, in the conclusion : 

Bright Star of the Morning ! this bosom is cold — 

I was forced from my native shade, 
And I wrapped me around with my mantle's fold, 

A sad, mournful Circassian maid ! 
And I then vow'd that rapture should never move 

This changeless cheek, this rayless eye, 
And I then vowed to feel neither bliss nor love, 

But I vowed I would meet thee and die. 

Occasionally the versification rises into melody and even 

strength ; as here — 

'Twas at the hour when Peris love 
To gaze upon the Heaven above 
"Whose portals bright with many a gem 
Are closed — forever closed on them. 

Upon the whole, however, it is feeble, vacillating, and ineffective ; 



MARGARET MILLER AND LUCRETIA M. DAVIDSON. 227 

giving token of having been " touched up" by the hand of a friend, 
from a much worse, into its present condition. Such rhymes as 
floor and shower — ceased and breast — shade and spread — brow 
and wo — clear and far — clear and air — morning and dawning — 
forth and earth — step and deep — Khan and hand — are constantly 
occurring ; and although, certainly, we should not, as a general 
rule, expect better things from a girl of sixteen, we still look in 
vain, and with something very much akin to a smile, for aught 
even approaching that " marvellous ease and grace of versifica- 
tion 1 '' about which Miss Sedgwick, in the benevolence of her heart, 
discourses. 

Nor does the story, to our dispassionate apprehension, appear 
" beautifully developed." It runs thus : — Amir Khan, Subahdar 
of Cachemere, weds a Circassian slave who, cold as a statue and as 
obstinately silent, refuses to return his love. The Subahdar ap- 
plies to a magician, who gives him 

a pensive flower 
Gathered at midnight's magic hour ; 

the effect of whose perfume renders him apparently lifeless while 
still in possession of all his senses. Amreeta, the slave, supposing 
her lover dead, gives way to clamorous grief, and reveals the se- 
cret love which she has long borne her lord, but refused to divulge 
because a slave. Amir Khan hereupon revives, and all trouble is 
at an end. 

Of course, no one at all read in Eastern fable will be willing to 
give Miss Davidson credit for originality in the conception of this 
little story ; and if she have claim to merit at all, as regards it, 
that claim must be founded upon the manner of narration. But 
it will be at once evident that the most naked outline alone can 
be given in the compass of four hundred and forty lines. The 
tale is, in sober fact, told very much as any young person might 
be expected to tell it. The strength of the narrator is wholly laid 
out upon a description of moonlight (in the usual style) with 
which the poem commences — upon a second description of moon- 
light (in precisely the same manner) with which a second division 
commences — and in a third description of the hall in which the 
entranced Subahdar reposes. This is all — absolutely all ; or at 
least the rest has the nakedness of mere catalogue. We recog- 



228 MARGARET MILLER AND LUCRETIA M DAVIDSON. 

nise, throughout, the poetic sentiment, but little — very little — of 
poetic power. We see occasional gleams of imagination : for ex- 
ample — 

And every crystal cloud of Heaven 

Bowed as it passed the queen of even 

Amreeta was cold as the marble floor 

That glistens beneath the nightly shower 

At that calm hour when Peris love 
To gaze upon the Heaven above, 
Whose portals bright with many a gem 
Are closed — forever closed on them 

The Subahdar with noiseless step 
Rushed like the night-breeze o'er the deep. 

We look in vain for another instance worth quoting. But were the 
fancy seen in these examples observable either in the general con- 
duct or in the incidents of the narrative, we should not feel obliged 
to disagree so unequivocally with that opinion which pronounces 
this clever little production " one which would not have done dis- 
credit to our most popular poets in the meridian of their fame /" 
" As the work of a girl of sixteen," most assuredly we do not 
think it " prodigious. ." In regard to it we may repeat what we 
said of " Lenore," — that we have seen finer poems in every re- 
spect, written by children of more immature age. It is a creditable 
composition ; nothing beyond this. And, in so saying, we shall 
startle none but the brainless, and the adopters of ready-made 
ideas. We are convinced that we express the unuttered senti- 
ment of every educated individual who has read the poem. Nor, 
having given the plain facts of the case, do we feel called upon to 
proffer any apology for our flat refusal to play ditto either to Miss 
Sedgwick, to Mr. Irving, or to Mr. Southey. 



WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING. 



WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING. 

In speaking of Mr. William Ellery Channing, who has just 
published a very neat little volume of poems, we feel the neces- 
sity of employing the indefinite rather than the definite article. 
He is a, and by no means the, William Ellery Channing. He is 
only the son of the great essayist deceased. He is just such a 
person, in despite of his clarum et venerabile nomen, as Pindar 
would have designated by the significant term ns. It may be 
said in his favor that nobody ever heard of him. Like an honest 
woman, he has always succeeded in keeping himself from being 
made the subject of gossip. His book contains about sixty-three 
things, which he calls poems, and which he no doubt seriously 
supposes so to be. They are full of all kinds of mistakes, of 
which the most important is that of their having been printed at 
all. They are not precisely English — nor will we insult a great 
nation by calling them Kickapoo ; perhaps they are Channingese. 
We may convey some general idea of them by two foreign terms 
not in common use — the Italian pavoneggiarsi, " to strut like a 
peacock," and the German word for ".sky-rocketing," schwarmerei. 
They are more preposterous, in a word, than any poems except 
those of the author of " Sam Patch ;" for we presume we are 
right (are we not ?) in taking it for granted that the author of 
" Sam Patch " is the very worst of all the wretched poets that 
ever existed upon earth. 

In spite, however, of the customary phrase about a man's 
" making a fool of himself," we doubt if any one was ever a fool 
of his own free will and accord. A poet, therefore, should not 
always be taken too strictly to task. He should be treated with 
leniency, and, even when damned, should be damned with re- 
spect. Nobility of descent, too, should be allowed its privileges 
not more in social life than in letters. The son of a great author 
cannot be handled too tenderly by the critical Jack Ketch. Mr. 
Channing must be hung, that's true. He must be hung in terro- 
rem — and for this there is no help under the sun ; but then we 
shall do him all manner of justice, and observe every species of 



230 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANGING. 

decorum, and be especially careful of his feelings, and hang him 
gingerly and gracefully, with a silken cord, as the Spaniards 
hang their grandees of the blue blood, their nobles of the san- 
gre azula. 

To be serious, then ; as we always wish to be if possible. Mr. 
Channing (whom we suppose to be a very young man, since we 
are precluded from supposing him a very old one,) appears to 
have been inoculated, at the same moment, with virus from Ten- 
nyson and from Carlyle. And here we do not wish to be mis- 
understood. For Tennyson, as for a man imbued with the. richest 
and rarest poetic impulses, we have an admiration — a reverence 
unbounded. His " Morte D'Arthur," his " Locksley Hall," his 
" Sleeping Beauty," his " Lady of Shalott," his " Lotos Eaters," 
his "^Enone," and many other poems, are not surpassed, in all 
that gives to Poetry its distinctive value, by the compositions of 
any one living or dead. And his leading error — that error which 
renders him unpopular — a point, to be sure, of no particular im- 
portance — that very error, we say, is founded in truth — in a keen 
perception of the elements of poetic beauty. We allude to his 
quaintness — to what the world chooses to term his affectation. 
No true poet — no critic whose approbation is worth even a copy 
of the volume we now hold in our hand — will deny that he feels 
impressed, sometimes even to tears, by many of those very affec- 
tations which he is impelled by the prejudice of his education, or 
by the cant of his reason, to condemn. He should thus be led 
to examine the extent of the one, and to be wary of the deduc- 
tions of the other. In fact, the profound intuition of Lord Bacon 
has supplied, in one of his immortal apothegms, the whole phil- 
osophy of the point at issue. " There is no exquisite beauty," he 
truly says, " without some strangeness in its proportions." We 
maintain, then, that Tennyson errs, not in his occasional quaint- 
ness, but in its continual and obtrusive excess. And, in accusing 
Mr. Channing of having been inoculated with virus from Tenny- 
son, we merely mean to say that he has adopted and exaggerated 
that noble poet's characteristic defect, having mistaken it for his 
principal merit. 

Mr. Tennyson is quaint only ; he is never, as some have sup- 
posed him, obscure — except, indeed, to the uneducated, whom he 



WILLIAM ELLERY CHANGING. 231 

does not address. Mr. Carlyle, on the other hand, is obscure 
only ; he is seldom, as some have imagined him, quaint. So far 
he is right ; for although quaintness, employed by a man of judg- 
ment and genius, may be made auxiliary to a poem, whose true 
thesis is beauty, and beauty alone, it is grossly, and even ridicu- 
lously, out of place in a work of prose. But in his obscurity it 
is scarcely necessary to say that he is wrong. Either a man in- 
tends to be understood, or he does not. If he write a book which 
he intends not to be understood, we shall be very happy indeed 
not to understand it ; but if he write a book which he means to 
be understood, and, in this book, be at all possible pains to pre- 
vent us from understanding it, we can only say that he is an ass 
■ — and this, to be brief, is our private opinion of Mr. Carlyle, 
which we now take the liberty of making public. 

It seems that having deduced, from Tennyson and Carlyle, an 
opinion of the sublimity of everything odd, and of the pro- 
fundity of everything meaningless, Mr. Channing has conceived 
the idea of setting up for himself as a poet of unusual depth, 
and very remarkable powers of mind. His airs and graces, in 
consequence, have a highly picturesque effect, and the Boston 
critics, who have a notion that poets are porpoises, (for they are 
always talking about their running in " schools,") cannot make up 
their minds as to what particular school he must belong. We say 
the Bobby Button school, by all means. He clearly belongs to 
that. And should nobody ever have heard of the Bobby Button 
school, that is a point of no material importance. We will an- 
swer for it, as it is one of our own. Bobby Button is a gentle- 
man with whom, for a long time, we have had the honor of an 
intimate acquaintance. His personal appearance is striking. He 
has quite a big head. His eyes protrude and have all the air of 
saucers. His chin retreats. His mouth is depressed at the cor- 
ners. He wears a perpetual frown of contemplation. His words 
are slow, emphatic, few, and oracular. His " thes," " ands," and 
" buts," have more meaning than other men's polysyllables. His 
nods would have put Burleigh's to the blush. His whole aspect, 
indeed, conveys the idea of a gentleman modest to a fault, and 
painfully overburthened with intellect. We insist, however, upon 
calling Mr. Channing's school of poetry the Bobby Button school. 



232 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANGING. 

rather because Mr. Channing's poetry is strongly suggestive of 
Bobby Button, than because Mr. Button himself ever dallied, to 
any very great extent, with the Muses. With the exception, in- 
deed, of a very fine " Sonnet to a Pig " — or rather the fragment 
of a sonnet, for he proceeded no farther than the words " piggy 
wiggy," with the italicized for emphasis — with the exception of 
this, we say, we are not aware of his having produced anything 
worthy of that stupendous genius which is certainly in him, and 
only wants, like the starling of Sterne, " to get out." 

The best passage in the book before us, is to be found at page 
121, and we quote it, as a matter of simple justice, in full : 

Dear friend, in this fair atmosphere again, 
Far from the noisy echoes of the main, 
Amid the world-old mountains, and the hills 
From whose strange grouping a fine power distills 
The soothing and the calm, I seek repose, 
The city's noise forgot and hard stern woes. 
As thou once said 'st, the rarest sons of earth 
Have in the dust of cities shown their worth, 
"Where long collision with the human curse 
Has of great glory been the frequent nurse, 
And only those who in sad cities dwell 
Are of the green trees fully sensible. 
To them the silver bells of tinkling streams 
Seem brighter than an angel's laugh in dreams. 

The four lines italicized are highly meritorious, and the whole 
extract is so far decent and intelligible, that we experienced a feel- 
ing of surprise upon meeting it amid the doggerel which sur- 
rounds it. Not less was our astonishment upon finding, at page 
1 8, a fine thought so well embodied as the following : 

Or see the early stars, a mild sweet train, 
Come out to bury the diurnal sun. 

But, in the way of commendation, we have now done. We have 
carefully explored the whole volume, in vain, for a single ad- 
ditional line worth even the most qualified applause. 

The utter abandon — the charming neglige — the perfect loose- 
ness (to use a western phrase) of his rhythm, is one of Mr. C.'s 
most noticeable, and certainly one of his most refreshing traits. 
It would be quite a pleasure to hear him read or scan, or to hear 
anybody else read or scan, such a line as this, at page 3, for ex- 
ample : 



WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING. 233 

Masculine almost though softly carv'd in grace, 

where "masculine" has to be read as a trochee, and "almost" as 
an iambus ; or this, at page 8 : 

That compels me on through wood, and fell, and moor, 

where " that compels " has to be pronounced as equivalent to the 
iambus "me on ;" or this, at page 18 : 

I leave thee, the maid spoke to the true youth, 

where both the " thes " demand a strong accent to preserve the 
iambic rhythm ; or this, at page 29 : 

So in our steps strides truth and honest trust, 
where (to say nothing of the grammar, which may be Dutch, but 
is not English) it is quite impossible to get through with the 
" step strides truth" without dislocating the under jaw ; or this, 
at page 32 : 

The serene azure the keen stars are now ; 

or this, on the same page : 

Sometime of sorrow, joy to thy Future ; 

or this, at page 56 : 

Harsh action, even in repose inwardly harsh ; 

or this, at page 59 : 

Provides amplest enjoyment. my brother ; 

or this, at page 138 : 

Like the swift petrel, mimicking the wave's measure ; 

about all of which the less we say the better. 

At page, 96 we read thus : 

Where the untrammelled soul on her wind pinions, 
Fearlessly sweeping, defies my earthly foes, 
There, there upon that infinitest sea 
Lady thy hope, so fair a hope, summons me. 

At page 51, we have it thus : 

The river calmly flows 
Through shining banks, thro' lonely glen 
Where the owl shrieks, tho' ne'er the cheer of men 

Has stirred its mute repose ; 
Still if you should walk there you would go there again. 

At page 136, we read as follows : 

Tune thy clear voice to no funereal song, 
For Death stands to welcome thee sure. 



234 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANGING. 

At page 116, he has this : 

These graves, you mean ; 

Their history who knows better than I ? 
For in the busy street strikes on my ear 
Each sound, even inaudible voices 
Lengthen the long tale my memory tells. 

Just below, on the same page, he has 

I see but little difference truly ; 

and at page 76 he fairly puts the climax to metrical absurdity in 

the lines which follow : 

The spirit builds his house in the last flowers — 
A beautiful mansion ; how the colors live, 
Intricately de/icate ! 

This is to be read, of course, intrikkittly delikkit, and " intrikkit- 

tly delikkit'' it is — unless, indeed, we are very especially mistaken. 

The affectations — the Tennysonisms of Mr. Ohanning — pervade 

his book at all points, and are not easily particularized. He 

employs, for example, the word "delight" for " delighted ;" as at 

page 2: 

Delight to trace the mountain-brook's descent. 

He uses, also, all the prepositions in a different sense from the 

rabble. If, for instance, he was called upon to say " on," he 

would'nt say it by any means, but he'd say " off," and endeavor 

to make it answer the purpose. For "to," in the same manner, 

he says "from ;" for "with," "of," and so on : at page 2, for 

example : 

Nor less in winter, mid the glittering banks 

Heaped of unspotted snow, the maiden roved 

For " serene," he says " serene ;" as at page 4 : 

The influences of this serene isle. 
For "subdued," he says "subdued :" as at page 16 : 
So full of thought, so subdued to bright fears. 
By the way, what kind of fears are bright ? 

For " eternal," he says " eterne" : as at page 30 : 
Has risen, and an eterne sun now paints. 
For " friendless," he substitutes " friendless ;" as at page 31 : 

Are drawn in other figures. Not friend^ss. 
To "future," he prefers " future :" as at page 32 : 
Sometime of sorrow. Joy to thy future. 



WILLIAM ELLERY CHANGING. 235 

To " azure," in the same way, he prefers " azure :" as at page 46 : 

Ye stand each separate in the azure. 
In place of " unheard," he writes "unheard :" as thus, at page 47 : 

Or think, tho' wwheard, that your sphere is dumb. 
In place of "perchance," he writes "perchance :" as at page VI : 

When joerchance sorrow with her icy smile. 
Instead of " more infinite," he writes " infim'ter," with an accent 
on the " nit," as thus, at page 100 : 

Hope's child, I summon infim'ter powers. 

And here we might as well ask Mr. Channing, in passing, what 
idea he attaches to infinity, and whether he really thinks that 
he is at liberty to subject the adjective " infinite" to degrees of 
comparison. Some of these days we shall hear, no doubt, of 
" eternal, eternaler, and eternalest." 

Our author is quite enamoured of the word " sumptuous," and 
talks about " sumptuous trees" and " sumptuous girls," with no 
other object, we think, than to employ the epithet at all hazards 
and upon all occasions. He seems unconscious that it means 
nothing more than expensive, or costly ; and we are not quite 
sure that either trees or girls are, in America, either the one or 
the other. 

For " loved" Mr. C. prefers to say " was loving," and takes 

great pleasure in the law phrase " the same." Both peculiarities 

are exemplified at page 20, where he says : 

The maid was loving this enamoured same. 

He is fond also, of inversions and contractions, and employs them 

in a very singular manner. At page 15 he has : 

Now may I thee describe a Paradise. 

At page 86 he says : 

Thou lazy river, flowing neither way 
Me figurest and yet thy banks seem gay. 

At page 143 he writes : 

Men change that Heaven above not more ; 

meaning that men change so much that Heaven above does not 
change more. At page 150 he says : 

But so much soul hast thou within thy form 
Than luscious summer days thou art the more ; 



236 WILLIAM ELLERY CHAFING. 

by which he would imply that the lady has so much soul within 
her form that she is more luscious than luscious summer days. 

Were we to quote specimens under the general head of " utter 
and irredeemable nonsense," we should quote nine-tenths of the 
book. Such nonsense, we mean, as the following, from page 1 1 : 

I hear thy solemn anthem fall, 

Of richest song upon my ear, 
That clothes thee in thy golden paU 

As this wide sun flows on the mere. 

Now let us translate this : He hears (Mr. Channing,) a solemn 
anthem, of richest song, fall upon his ear, and this anthem clothes 
the individual who sings it in that individual's golden pall, in the 
same manner that, or at the time when, the wide sun flows on the 
mere — which is all very delightful, no doubt. 
At page 37, he informs us that, 

It is not living, 

To a soul believing, 
To change each noble joy, 
Which our strength employs, 
For a state half rotten 
And a life of toys, 
And that it is 

Better to be forgotten 
Than lose equipoise. 

And we dare say it is, if one could only understand what kind of 
equipoise is intended. It is better to be forgotten, for instance, 
than to lose one's equipoise on the top of a shot tower. 

Occupying the whole of page 88, he has the six lines which 
follow, and we will present any one (the author not excepted,) 
with a copy of the volume, if any one will tell us what they are 
all about : 

He came and waved a little silver wand, 

He dropped the veil that hid a statue fair, 
He drew a circle with that pearly hand, 

His grace confin'd that beauty in the air, 
Those limbs so gentle now at rest from flight, 
Those quiet eyes now musing on the night. 

At page 102, he has the following : — 

Dry leaves with yellow ferns, they are 
Fit wreath of Autumn, while a star 
Still, bright, and pure, our frosty air 

Shivers in twinkling points 

Of thin celestial hair 
And thus one side of Heaven anoints. 



WILLIAM ELLERY CHANGING. 237 

This we think we can explain. Let us see. Dry leaves, mixed 
with yellow ferns, are a wreath fit for autumn at the time when 
our frosty air shivers a still, bright, and pure star with twinkling 
points of thin celestial hair, and with this hair, or hair plaster, 
anoints one side of the sky. Yes — this is it — no doubt. 
At page 123, we have these lines : 

My sweet girl is lying still 

In her lovely atmosphere ; 
The gentle hopes her blue veins fill 

With pure silver warm and clear. 

see her hair, mark her breast ! 

Would it not, ! comfort thee, 
If thou couldst nightly go to rest 

By that virgin chastity ? 

Yes ; we think, upon the whole, it would. The eight lines are 

entitled a a Song," and we should like very much to hear Mr. 

Channing sing it. 

Pages 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, and 41, are filled with short 

" Thoughts" in what Mr. C. supposes to be the manner of Jean 

Paul. One of them runs thus : 

How shall I live ? In earnestness. 
What shall I do ? Work earnestly. 
What shall I give ? A willingness. 
What shall I gain ? Tranquillity. 
But do you mean a quietness 
In which I act and no man bless ? 
Flash out in action infinite and free, 
Action conjoined with deep tranquillity, 
Resting upon the soul's true utterance, 
And life shall flow as merry as a dance. 

All our readers will be happy to hear, we are sure, that Mr. C. is 

going "to flash out." Elsewhere at page 97, he expresses very 

similar sentiments : 

My empire is myself and I dyfy 

The external ; yes, I rule the whole or die ! 

It will be observed here, that Mr. Channing's empire is himself, (a 
small kingdom, however,) that he intends to defy " the external," 
whatever that is — perhaps he means the infernals — and that, in 
short, he is going to rule the whole or die ; all which is very pro- 
per, indeed, and nothing more than we have to expect from Mr. C. 
Again, at page 146, he is rather fierce than otherwise. He 



238 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANGING. 

We surely were not meant to ride the sea, 
Skimming the wave in that so prisoned small, 

Reposing our infinite faculties utterly. 
Boom like a roaring sunlit waterfall. 

Humming to infinite abysms : speak loud, speak free ! 

Here Mr. Charming- not only intends to " speak loud and free" 

himself, but advises every body else to do likewise. For his own 

part, he says, he is going to " boom' 1 '' — " to hum and to boom" — 

to "hum like a roaring waterfall," and "boom to an infinite 

abysm." What, in the name of Belzebub, is to become of us all ? 

At page 39, while indulging in similar bursts of fervor and of 

indignation, he says : 

Thou meetest a common man 
With a delusive show of can, 

and this passage we quote by way of instancing what we consider 
the only misprint in the book. Mr. Channing could never have 
meant to say : 

Thou meetest a common man 

With a delusive show of can ; 

for what is a delusive show of can ? No doubt it should have 
been, 

Thou meetest a little pup 

With a delusive show of tin-cup. 

A can, we believe, is a tin-cup, and the cup must have been tied 
to the tail of the pup. Boys will do such tricks, and there is no 
earthly way of preventing them, we believe, short of cutting off 
their heads — or the tails of the pups. 

And this remarkable little volume is, after all, by .William El- 
lery Channing. A great name it has been said, is, in many cases, 
a great misfortune. We hear daily complaints from the George 
Washington Dixons, the Socrates Smiths, and the Napoleon Buon- 
aparte Joneses, about the inconsiderate ambition of their parents 
and sponsors. By inducing invidious comparison, these prceno- 
mina get their bearers (so they say) into every variety of scrape. 
If George Washington Dixon, for example, does not think proper, 
upon compulsion, to distinguish himself as a patriot, he is consi- 
dered a very singular man ; and Socrates Smith is never brought 
up before his honor the Mayor without receiving a double allow- 
ance of thirty days ; while his honor the Mayor can assign no 



WILLIAM ELLERY CHAINING. 239 

sounder reason for his severity, than that better things than get- 
ting toddied are to be expected of Socrates. Napoleon Buona- 
parte Jones, on the other hand, to say nothing of being called 
Nota Bene Jones by all his acquaintance, is cowskinned, with per- 
fect regularity, five time a month, merely because people will feel 
it a point of honor to cowskin a Napoleon Buonaparte. 

And yet these gentlemen — the Smiths and the Joneses — are 
wrong in toto — as the Smiths and the Joneses invariably are. 
They are wrong, we say, in accusing their parents and sponsors. 
They err in attributing their misfortunes and persecutions to the 
prcenomina — to the names assigned them at the baptismal font. 
Mr. Socrates Smith does not receive his double quantum of thirty 
days because he is called Socrates, but because he is called Socrates 
Smith. Mr. Napoleon Buonaparte Jones is not in the weekly re- 
ceipt of a flogging on account of being Mr. Napoleon Buonaparte, 
but simply on account of being Mr. Napoleon Buonaparte Jones. 
Here, indeed, is a clear distinction. It is the surname which is to 
blame, after all. Mr. Smith must drop the Smith. Mr. Jones 
should discard the Jones. No one would ever think of taking 
Socrates — Socrates solely — to the watchhouse ; and there is not 
a bully living who would venture to cowskin Napoleon Buona- 
parte perse. And the reason is plain. With nine individuals 
out of ten, as the world is at present happily constituted, Mr. 
Socrates (without the Smith) would be taken for the veritable 
philosopher of whom we have heard so much, and Mr. Napoleon 
Buonaparte (without the Jones) would be received implicitly as 
the hero of Austerlitz. And should Mr. Napoleon Buonaparte 
(without the Jones) give an opinion upon military strategy, it 
would be heard with the profoundest respect. And should Mr. 
Socrates (without the Smith) deliver a lecture or write a book, 
what critic so bold as not to pronounce it more luminous than the 
logic of Emerson, and more profound than the Orphicism of Al- 
cott. In fact, both Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones, in the case we have 
imagined, would derive through their own ingenuity, a very ma- 
terial advantage. But no such ingenuity has been needed in the 
case of Mr. William Ellery Channing, who has been befriended 
by Fate, or the foresight of his sponsors, and who has no Jones 
or Smith at the end of his name. 



240 WILLIAM WALLACE. 

And here, too, a question occurs. There are many people in 
the world silly enough to be deceived by appearances. There are 
individuals so crude in intellect — so green, (if we may be permit- 
ted to employ a word which answers our purpose much better 
than any other in the language,) so green, we say, as to imagine, 
in the absence of any indication to the contrary, that a volume 
bearing upon its title-page the name of William Ellery Channing, 
must necessarily be the posthumous work of that truly illustrious 
author, the sole Willian Ellery Channing of whom any body in 
the world ever heard. There are a vast number of uninformed 
young persons prowling about our book-shops, who will be raw 
enough to buy, and even to read half through this pretty little 
book, (God preserve and forgive them !) mistaking it for the com- 
position of another. But what then ? Are not books made, as 
well as razors, to sell ? The poet's name is William Ellery Chan- 
ning — is it not ? And if a man has not a right to the use of his 
own name, to the use of what has he a right ? And could the 
poet have reconciled it to his conscience to have injured the sale 
of his own volume by any uncalled-for announcement upon the 
title-page, or in a preface, to the effect that he is not his father, 
but only his father's very intelligent son ? To put the case more 
clearly by reference to our old friends, Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones. 
Is either Mr. Smith, when mistaken for Socrates, or Mr. Jones, 
when accosted as Napoleon, bound, by any conceivable species 
of honor, to inform the whole world — the one, that he is not 
Socrates, but only Socrates Smith ; the other, that he is by no 
means Napoleon Buonaparte, but only Napoleon Buonaparte 
Jones ? 



WILLIAM WALLACE. 

Among our men of genius whom, because they are men of ge- 
nius, we neglect, let me not fail to mention William Wallace, of 
Kentucky. Had Mr. W. been born under the wings of that in- 
effable buzzard, "The North American Review," his unusual me- 
rits would long ago have been blazoned to the world — as the far 
inferior merits of Sprague, Dana, and others of like calibre, have 
already been blazoned. Neither of these gentlemen has written 



WILLIAM WALLACE. 241 



a poem worthy to be compared with " The Chaunt of a Soul," 
published in "The Union Magazine" for November, 1848. It is 
a noble composition throughout — imaginative, eloquent, full of 
dignity, and well sustained. It abounds in detached images of 
high merit — for example : 

Your early splendor's gone 

Like stars into a cloud withdrawn — 

Like music laid asleep 

In dried up fountains. . . . 

Enough, I am, and shall not choose to die. 
No matter what our future Fate may be, 
To live, is in itself a majesty. . . . 

And Truth, arising from yon deep, 

Is plain as a white statue on a tall, dark steep. . . . 

Then 



The Earth and Heaven were fair, 
While only less than Gods seemed all my fellow men. 
Oh, the delight — the gladness — 
The sense, yet love, of madness — 
The glorious choral exultations — 
The far-off sounding of the banded nations — 
The wings of angels in melodious sweeps 
Upon the mountain's hazy steeps — 
The very dead astir loithin their coffined deeps — 
The dreamy veil that wrapt the star and sod — 
A swathe of purple, gold, and amethyst — 
And, luminous behind the billowing mist 
Something that looked to my young eyes like God. 

I admit that the defect charged, by an envious critic, upon Bay- 
ard Taylor — the sin of excessive rhetoricianism — is, in some mea- 
sure, chargeable to Wallace. He, now and then, permits enthusi- 
asm to hurry him into bombast ; but at this point he is rapidly 
improving ; and, if not disheartened by the cowardly neglect of 
those who dare not praise a poetical aspirant with genius and 
without influence, will soon rank as one of the very noblest of 
American poets. In fact, he is so now. 
Vol. III.— 11 



242 ESTELLE ANNA LEWIS. 



ESTELLE ANNA LEWIS. 

The maiden name of Mrs. Lewis was Robinson. She is a na- 
tive of Baltimore. Her family is one of the best in America. 
Her father was a distinguished Cuban of English and Spanish 
parentage, wealthy, influential, and of highly cultivated mind : — 
from him, perhaps, Mrs. Lewis has inherited the melancholy 
temperament which so obviously predominates in her writings. 
Between the death of her father and her present comfortable cir- 
cumstances, she has undergone many romantic and striking vicis- 
situdes of fortune, which, of course, have not failed to enlarge her 
knowledge of human nature, and to develope the poetical germ 
which became manifest in her earliest infancy. 

Mrs. Lewis is, perhaps, the best educated, if not the most accom- 
plished of American authoresses — using the word " accomplish- 
ed" in the ordinary acceptation of that term. She is not only 
cultivated as respects the usual ornamental acquirements of her 
sex, but excels as a modern linguist, and very especially as a clas- 
sical scholar ; while her scientific acquisitions are of no common 
order. Her occasional translations from the more difficult portions 
of Virgil have been pronounced, by our first Professors, the best 
of the kind yet accomplished — a commendation which only a 
thorough classicist can appreciate in its full extent. Her rudi- 
mental education was received, in part, at Mrs. Willard's celebrated 
Academy at Troy; but she is an incessant and very ambitious 
student, and, in this sense, the more important part of her educa- 
tion may be said to have been self-attained. 

In character, Mrs. Lewis is everything which can be thought 
desirable in woman — generous, sensitive, impulsive ; enthusiastic 
in her admiration of Beauty and Virtue, but ardent in her scorn 
of wrong. The predominant trait of her disposition, as before 
hinted, is a certain romantic sensibility, bordering upon melan- 
choly, or even gloom. In person, she is distinguished by the 
grace and dignity of her form, and the nobility of her manner. 
She has auburn hair, naturally curling, and expressive eyes of 



ESTELLE ANNA LEWIS. 243 

dark hazel. Her portrait, by Elliot, which has attracted much 
attention, is most assuredly no flattering likeness, although admi- 
rable as a work of art, and conveying a forcible idea of its accom- 
plished original, so far as regards the tout ensemble. 

At an early age Miss Robinson was allied in marriage to Mr. 
S. D. Lewis, attorney and counsellor at law ; and soon afterwards 
they cook up their residence in Brooklyn, where they have ever 
since continued to reside — Mr. Lewis absorbed in the labors of his 
profession, as she in the pleasurable occupations connected with 
Literature and Art. 

Her earliest efforts were made in "The Family Magazine," 
edited by the well-known Solomon South wick, of Albany. Sub- 
sequently she wrote much for various periodicals — in chief part 
for " The Democratic Review ;" but her first appearance before 
the public in volume-form, was in the " Records of the Heart," 
issued by the Appleton's in 1844. The leading poems in this, 
are " Florence," " Zenel," " Melpomene," " Laone," " The Last 
Hour of Sappho," and " The Bride of Guayaquil" — all long and 
finished compositions. "Florence" is, perhaps, the best of the 
series, upon the whole — although all breathe the true poetical 
spirit. It is a tale of passion and wild romance, vivid, forcible, 
and artistical. But a faint idea, of course, can be given of such a 
poem by an extract ; but we cannot refrain from quoting two brief 
passages as characteristic of the general manner and tone : 

Morn is abroad ; the sun is up ; 
The dew fills high each lily's cup ; 
Ten thousand flowerets springing there 
Diffuse their incense through the air, 
And smiling hail the morning beam : 
The fawns plunge panting in the stream, 
Or through the vale with light foot spring : 
Insect and bird are on the wing, 
And all is bright, as when in May 
Young Nature holds a holiday. 



Again : 



The waves are smooth, the wind is calm ; 

Onward the golden stream is gliding 
Amid the myrtle and the palm 

And ilices its margin hiding. 
Now sweeps it o'er the jutting shoals 
In murmurs, like despairing souls, 



244 ESTELLE ANNA LEWIS. 

Now deeply, softly, flows along, 
Like ancient minstrel's warbling song ; 
Then slowly, darkly, thoughtfully, 
Loses itself in the mighty sea. 

Among the minor poems in this collection is " The Forsaken," 
so widely known and so universally admired. The popular as 
well as the critical voice, ranks it as the most beautiful ballad of 
its kind ever written. 

We have read this little Poem more than twenty times, and 
always with increasing admiration. It is inexpressibly beautiful. 
No one of real feeling can peruse it without a strong inclination 
to tears. Its irresistible charm is its absolute truth — the unaffect- 
ed naturalness of its thought. The sentiment which forms the 
basis of the composition, is, perhaps, at once the most universal 
and the most passionate of sentiments. No human being exists, 
over the age of fifteen, who has not, in his heart of hearts, a ready 
echo for all there so pathetically expressed. The essential poetry 
of the ideas would only be impaired by "foreign ornament." 
This is a case in which we should be repelled by the mere con- 
ventionalities of the Muse. We demand, for such thoughts, the 
most rigorous simplicity at all points. It will be observed that, 
strictly speaking, there is not an attempt at " imagery" in the 
whole poem. All is direct, terse, penetrating. In a word, nothing 
could be better done. The versification, while in full keeping 
with the general character of simplicity, has, in certain passages, 
a vigorous, trenchant euphony which would confer honor on the 
most accomplished masters of the art. We refer, especially to 
the lines : 

And follow me to my long home 
Solemn and slow. 

And the quatrain : 

Could I but know when I am sleeping 

Low in the ground, 
One faithful heart would there be keeping 

Watch all night round. 

The initial trochee here, in each instance, substituted for the 
iambus, produces, so naturally as to seem accidental, a very effec- 
tive echo of sound to sense. The thought included in the line 
" And light the tomb," should be dwelt upon to be appreciated in 
its full extent of beauty ; and the verses which I have italicized iu 



ESTELLE ANNA LEWIS. 246 

the last stanza, are poetry — poetry in the purest sense of that 
much misused word. They have power — indisputable power ; 
making us thrill with a sense of their weird magnificence as we 
read them. 

After the publication of the " Records," Mrs. Lewis contributed 
more continuously to the periodicals of the day — her writings 
appearing chiefly in the " American Review," and the " Demo- 
cratic Review," and " Graham's Magazine." In the autumn of 
1848, Mr. G. P. Putnam published, in exquisite style, her " Child 
of the Sea, and Other Poems " — a volume which at once placed 
its fair authoress in the first rank of American authors. The 
composition which gives title to this collection is a tale of sea-ad- 
venture — of crime, passion, love and revenge — resembling, in all 
the nobler poetic elements, the " Corsair " of Lord Byron — from 
which, however, it widely differs in plot, conduct, manner, and 
expression. The opening lines not only give a general summary 
of the design, but serve well to exemplify the ruling merits of 
the composition : — 

Where blooms the myrtle and the olive flings 
Its aromatic breath upon the air ; 
Where the sad bird of Night forever sings 
Meet anthems for the children of Despair, 
Who, silently, with wild dishevelled hair, 
Stray through those valleys of perpetual bloom ; 
Where hideous War and Murder from their lair 
Stalk forth in awful and terrific gloom 
Rapine and Vice disport on Glory's gilded tomb : 

My fancy pensive pictures youthful Love, 
Ill-starred yet trustful, truthful and sublime 
As ever angels chronicled above : — 
The sorrowings of Beauty in her prime ; 
Virtue's reward ; the punishment of Crime ; 
The dark, inscrutable decrees of Fate ; 
Despair untold before in prose or rhyme ; 
The wrong, the agony, the sleepless hate 
That mad the soul and make the bosom desolate. 

One of the most distinguishing merits of the " Child of the 
Sea," is the admirable conduct of its narrative — in which every 
incident has its proper position — where nothing is inconsequent 
or incoherent — and where, above all, the rich and vivid interest 
is never, for a single moment, permitted to flag. How few, even 
of the most accomplished and skilful of poets, are successful in 



246 ESTELLE ANNA LEWIS. 

the management of a story, when that story has to be told in 
verse. The difficulty is easily analyzed. In all mere narrations 
there are particulars of the dullest prose, which are inevitable and 
indispensable, but which serve no other purpose than to bind to- 
gether the true interest of the incidents — in a word, explanatory 
passages, which are yet to be " so done into verse " as not to let 
down the imagination from its pride of place. Absolutely to po- 
etize these explanatory passages is beyond the reach of art, for 
prose, and that of the flattest kind, is their essentiality ; but the 
skill of the artist should be sufficient to gloss them over so as to 
seem poetry amid the poetry by which they are surrounded. For 
this end a very consummate art is demanded. Here the tricks 
of phraseology — quaintnesses — and rhythmical effects, come op- 
portunely into play. Of the species of skill required, Moore, in 
his " Alciphron," has given us, upon the whole, the happiest ex- 
emplification ; but Mrs. Lewis has very admirably succeeded in 
her " Child of the Sea." I am strongly tempted, by way of 
showing what I mean, to give here a digest of her narrative, 
with comments — but this would be doing the author injustice, in 
anticipating the interest of her work. 

The poem, although widely differing in subject from any of 
Mrs. Lewis' prior compositions, and far superior to any of them 
in general vigor, artistic skill, and assured certainty of purpose, is 
nevertheless easily recognisable as the production of the same 
mind which originated " Florence " and " The Forsaken." AVe 
perceive, throughout, the same passion, the same enthusiasm, and 
the same seemingly reckless abandon of thought and manner 
which I have already mentioned as characterizing the writer. I 
should have spoken also, of a fastidious yet most sensitive and 
almost voluptuous sense of Beauty. These are the general traits 
of " The Child of the Sea ;" but undoubtedly the chief value of the 
poem, to ordinary readers, will be found to lie in the aggregation 
of its imaginative passages — its quotable points. I give a few 
of these at random : — the description of sunset upon the Bay of 
Gibraltar will compare favorably with anything of a similar char- 
acter ever written : 

Fresh blows the breeze on Tarick's burnished bay ; 
The silent sea-mews bend them through the spray : 



ESTELLE ANNA LEWIS. 247 

The Beauty-freighted barges bound afar 
To the soft music of the gay guitar. 

I quote farther : 

the oblivious world of sleep — 

That rayless realm where Fancy never beams — 
Tltat Nothingness beyond the Land of Dreams 



Folded his arms across his sable vest, 
As if to keep the heart within his breast. 

■ he lingers by the streams, 

Pondering on incommunicable themes.. . , 



Nor notes the fawn that tamely by him glides 

The violets lifting up their azxtre eyes 

Like timid virgins whom Love's steps surprise.. . . 

And all is hushed — so still — so silent there 
That one might hear an angel wing the air 



Adown the groves and dewy vales afar 
Tinkles the serenader's soft guitar 

her tender cares, 

Her solemn sighs, her silent streaming tears, 

Her more than woman's soft solicitude 

To soothe his spirit in its frantic mood.. . . . 

Now by the crags — then by each pendant bough 
Steadies his steps adown the mountain's brow 



Sinks on his crimson couch, so long unsought, 

And f oats along the phantom stream of thought. . . . 

Ah, no ! for there are times when the sick soul 
Lies calm amid the storms that round it roll, 
Indifferent to Fate or to what haven 
By the terrific tempest it is driven 

The Dahlias, leaning from, the golden vase, 

Peer pensively upon her pallid face, 

While the sweet songster o'er the oaken door 

Ljooks through his grate and warbles " weep no more /" 

lovely in her misery, 

As jewel sparkling up through the dark sea 

Where hung the fiery moon and stars of blood, 
And phantom ships rolled on the rolling flood.. . . . 

My mind by grief was ripened ere its time, 
And knowledge came spontaneous as a chime 
That flows into the soul, unbid, unsought ; 
On Earth and Air and Heaven I fed my thought — 
On Ocean's teachings — ^Etna's lava tears — 
Ruins and wrecks and nameless sepidchres 

Each morning brought to them untasted bliss. 
No pangs — no sorrows came with varying years — 
No cold distrust — no faithlessless — no tears — . . . . 



248 ESTELLE ANNA LEWIS. 

But hand in hand as Eve and Adam trod 
Eden, they walked beneath the smile of God. 

It will be understood, of course, that we quote these brief pas- 
sages by no means as the best, or even as particularly excelling 
the rest of the poem, on an averaged estimate of merit, but 
simply with a view of exemplifying some of the author's more 
obvious traits — those, especially, of vigorous rhythm, and forcible 
expression. In no case can the loftier qualities of a truly great 
poem be conveyed through the citation of its component por- 
tions, in detail, even when long extracts are given — how much 
less, then, by such mere points as we have selected. 

" The Broken Heart " (included with " The Child of the Sea") 
is even more characteristic of Mrs. Lewis than that very remarka- 
ble poem. It is more enthusiastic, more glowing, more passion- 
ate, and perhaps more abundant in that peculiar spirit of abandon 
which has rendered Mrs. Maria Brooks' "Zophiel" so great a 
favorite with the critics. "The Child of the Sea" is, of course, 
by far the more elaborate and more artistic composition, and ex- 
cels ""The Broken Heart" in most of those high qualities which 
immortalize a work of art. Its narrative, also, is more ably con- 
ducted and more replete with incident — but to the delicate fancy 
or the bold imagination of a poet, there is an inexpressible charm 
in the latter. 

The minor poems embraced in the volume published by Mr. 
Putnam, evince a very decided advance in skill made by their 
author since the issue of the " Records of the Heart." A nobler 
poem than the " La Vega " could not be easily pointed out. Its 
fierce energy of expression will arrest attention very especially — 
but its general glow and vigor have rarely been equalled. 

Among the author's less elaborate compositions, however, " The 
Angel's Visit," written since the publication of her " Child of the 
Sea," is, perhaps, upon the whole, the best — although "The 
Forsaken " and " La Vega " are scarcely, if at all, inferior. 

In summing up the autorial merits of Mrs. Lewis, all critical 
opinion must agree in assigning her a high, if not the very 
highest rank among the poetesses of her land. Her artistic 
ability is unusual; her command of language great ; her acquire- 
ments numerous and thorough ; her range of incident wide ; her 



JOEL T. HEADLEY. 249 



invention, generally, vigorous ; her fancy exuberant ; and her 
imagination — that primary and most indispensible of all poetic 
requisites — richer, perhaps, than any of her female contempo- 
raries. But as yet — her friends sincerely believe — she has given 
merely an earnest of her powers. 



JOEL T. HEADLEY.* 

The Reverend Mr. Headley — (why will he not put his full title 
in his title-pages ?) has in his " Sacred Mountains" been reversing 
the facts of the old fable about the mountains that brought forth 
the mouse — parturiunt monies nascetur ridiculus mus — for in this 
instance it appears to be the mouse — the little ridiculus mus — that 
has been bringing forth the " Mountains," and a great litter of 
them, too. The epithet, funny, however, is perhaps the only one 
which can be considered as thoroughly applicable to the book. 
We say that a book is a " funny" book, and nothing else, when it 
spreads over two hundred pages an amount of matter which could 
be conveniently presented in twenty of a magazine : that a book 
is a " funny" book — " only this and nothing more" — when it is 
written in that kind of phraseology, in which John Philpot Cur- 
ran, when drunk, would have made a speech in at a public dinner : 
and, moreover, we do say, emphatically, that a book is a " funny" 
book, and nothing but a funny book, whenever it happens to be 
penned by Mr. Headley. 

We should like to give some account of " The Sacred Moun- 
tains," if the thing were only possible — but we cannot conceive 
that it is. Mr. Headley belongs to that numerous class of authors, 
who must be read to be understood, and who, for that reason, very 
seldom are as thoroughly comprehended as they should be. Let 
us endeavor, however, to give some general idea of the work. 
" The design," says the author, in his preface, " is to render more 
familiar and life-like, some of the scenes of the Bible." Here, in 
the very first sentence of his preface, we suspect the Reverend Mr. 

* The Sacred Mountains : By J. T. Headley, — Author of " Napoleon and his 
Marshals," " "Washington and his Generals, etc." 

11* 



250 JOEL T. HEADLEY. 



Headley of fibbing : for his design, as it appears to ordinary ap- 
prehension, is merely that of making a little money by selling a 
little book. 

The mountains described are Ararat, Moriah, Sinai, Hor, Pisgah, 
Horeb, Carmel, Lebanon, Zio.n, Tabor, Olivet, and Calvary. Tak- 
ing up these, one by one, the author proceeds in his own very 
peculiar way, to elocutionize about them : we really do not know 
how else to express what it is that Mr. Headley does with these 
eminences. Perhaps if we were to say that he stood up before 
the reader and " made a speech" about them, one after the other, 
we should come still nearer the truth. By way of carrying out 
his design, as announced in the preface, that of rendering " more 
familiar and life-like some of the scenes" and so-forth, he tells not 
only how each mountain is, and was, but how it might have been 
and ought to be in his own opinion. To hear him talk, anybody 
would suppose that he had been at the laying of the corner-stone 
of Solomon's Temple — to say nothing of being born and brought 
up in the ark with Noah, and hail-fellow-well-met, with every one 
of the beasts that went into it. If any person really desires to know 
how and why it was that the deluge took place — but especially how 
— if any person wishes to get minute and accurate information on 
the topic — let him read " The Sacred Mountains" — let him only 
listen to the Reverend Mr. Headley. He explains to us precisely 
how it all took place — what Noah said, and thought, while the ark 
was building, and what the people, who saw him building the ark, 
said and thought about his undertaking such a work ; and how 
the beasts, birds, and fishes looked, as they came in arm in arm ; 
and what the dove did, and what the raven did not — in short, all 
the rest of it : nothing could be more beautifully posted up. 
What can Mr. Headley mean, at page 17, by the remark that 
" there is no one who does not lament that there is not a fuller 
antediluvian history ?" We are quite sure that nothing that ever 
happened before the flood, has been omitted in the scrupulous re- 
searches of the author of " The Sacred Mountains." 

He might, perhaps, wrap up the fruits of these researches in 

rather better English than that which he employs : 

Yet still the water rose around them till all through the valleys nothing 
but little black islands of human beings were seen on the surface The 



JOEL T. HEADLEY. 251 



more fixed the irrevocable decree, the heavier he leaned on the Omnipotent 

arm And lo ! a solitary cloud comes drifting along the morning sky and 

catches against the top of the mountain At length emboldened by their 

own numbers they assembled tumultuously together Aaron never appears 

so perfect a character as Moses As he advanced from rock to rock the 

sobbing of the multitude that followed after, tore his heart-strings Friends 

were following after whose sick Christ had healed The steady moun- 
tain threatened to lift from its base and be carried away Sometimes 

God's hatred of sin, sometimes his care for his children, sometimes the disci- 
pline of his church, were the motives Surely it was his mighty hand that 

laid on that trembling tottering mountain, <fec. <fcc. &c. 

These things are not exactly as we could wish them, perhaps : 
— but that a gentleman should know so much about Noah's ark 
and know anything about anything else, is scarcely to be expect- 
ed. We have no right to require English grammar and accurate 
information about Moses and Aaron at the hands of one and the 
same author. For our parts, now we come to think of it, if we 
only understood as much about Mount Sinai and other matters as 
Mr. Headley does, we should make a point of always writing bad 
English upon principle, whether we knew better or not. 

It may well be made a question moreover, how far a man of 

genius is justified in discussing topics so serious as those handled 

by Mr. Headley, in any ordinary kind of style. One should not 

talk about Scriptural subjects as one would talk about the rise and 

fall of stocks or the proceedings of Congress. Mr. Headley has 

seemed to feel this and has therefore elevated his manner — a little. 

For example : 

The fields were smiling in verdure before his eyes ; the perfumed breezes 
floated by. . . .The sun is sailing over the encampment. . . .That cloud was 
God's pavilion ; the thunder was its sentinels ; and the lightning the lances' 

points as they moved round the sacred trust And how could he part 

with his children whom he had borne on his brave heart for more than forty 

years ? Thus everything conspired to render Zion the spell-word of the 

nation and on its summit the heart of Israel seemed to lie and throb The 

sun died in the heavens ; <z?i earthqicake thundered on to complete the dis- 
may, &c. &c. 

Here no one can fail to perceive the beauty (in an antediluvian, 
or at least in a Pickwickian sense) of these expressions in general, 
about the floating of the breeze, the sailing of the sun, the thun- 
dering of the earthquake and the throbbing of the heart as it lay 
on the top of the mountain. 

The true artist, however, always rises as he proceeds, and in 
bis last page or so brings all his elocution to a climax. Only 



252 JOEL T. HEADLEY. 



hear Mr. Headley's finale. He has been describing the crucifixion 
and now soars into the sublime : 

How Heaven regarded this disaster, and the Universe felt at the sight, I 
cannot tell. I know not but tears fell like rain-drops from angelic eyes when 
they saw Christ spit upon and struck. I know not but there was silence on 
high for more than " half an hour" when the scene of the crucifixion was 
transpiring, — [a scene, as well as an event, always " transpires" with Mr. 
Headley] — a silence unbroken save by the solitary sound of some harp-string 
on which unconsciously fell the agitated, trembling fingers of a seraph. I 
know not but all the radiant ranks on high, and even Gabriel himself, turned 
with the deepest solicitude to the Father's face, to see if he was calm and 
untroubled amid it all. I know not but his composed brow and serene ma- 
jesty were all that restrained Heaven from one universal shriek of horror 
when they heard groans on Calvary — dying groans. I know not but they 
thought God had given his glory to another, but one thing I do know, [Ah, 
there is really one thing Mr. Headley knows !] — that when they saw through 
the vast design, comprehended the stupendous scene, the hills of God shook 
to a shout that never before rung over their bright tops, and the crystal sea 
trembled to a song that had never before stirred its bright depths, and the 
" Glory to God in the Highest," was a sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and 
harping symphonies. 

Here we have direct evidence of Mr. Headley's accuracy not 
less than of his eloquence. " I know not but that" one is as vast 
as the other. The one thing that he does know he knows to per- 
fection : — he knows not only what the chorus was (it was one of 
" hallelujahs and harping symphonies") but also how much of it 
there was — it was a " sevenfold chorus." Mr. Headley is a ma- 
thematical man. Moreover he is a modest man ; for he confesses 
(no doubt with tears in his eyes) that really there is one thino- 
that he does not know. " How Heaven regarded this disaster, 
and the Universe felt at the sight, I cannot tell." Only think of 
that ! /cannot ! — 7, Headley, really cannot tell how the Universe 
" felt" once upon a time ! This is downright bashfulness on the 
part of Mr. Headley. He could tell if he would only try. Why 
did he not inquire ? Had he demanded of the Universe how it 
felt, can any one doubt that the answer would have been — " Pretty 
well, I thank you, my dear Headley ; how do you feel yourself?" 

" Quack" is a word that sounds well only in the mouth of a 
duck ; and upon our honor we feel a scruple in using it : — never- 
theless the truth should be told ; and the simple fact is, that the 
author of the " Sacred Mountains" is the Autocrat of all the 
Quacks. In saying this, we beg not to be misunderstood. We 
mean no disparagement to Mr. Headley. We admire that gen- 



GEORGE P. MORRIS. 253 



tleman as much as any individual ever did except that gentleman 
himself. He looks remarkably well at all points — although per- 
haps best, EX AS — at a distance — as the lying Pindar says he 
saw Archilocbus, who died ages before tbe vagabond was born : — 
the reader will excuse the digression ; but talking of one great 
man is very apt to put us in mind of another. We were saying — 
were we not ? — that Mr. Headley is by no means to be sneered at 
as a quack. This might be justifiable, indeed, were he only a 
quack in a small way — a quack doing business by retail. But the 
wholesale dealer is entitled to respect. Besides, the Reverend 
author of " Napoleon and his Marshals" was a quack to some 
purpose. He knows what he is about. We like perfection wher- 
ever we see it. We readily forgive a man for being a fool if he 
only be a -perfect fool — and this is a particular in which we cannot 
put our hands upon our hearts and say that Mr. Headley is defi- 
cient. He acts upon the principle that if a thing is worth doing 
at all it is worth doing well: — and the thing that he " does" espe- 
cially well is the public. 



GEORGE P. MORRIS. 

There are few cases in which mere popularity should be con- 
sidered a proper test of merit ; but the case of song-writing is, I 
think, one of the few. In speaking of song-writing, I mean, of 
course, the composition of brief poems with an eye to their adap- 
tation for music in the vulgar sense. In this ultimate destination 
of the song proper, lies its essence — its genius. It is the strict 
reference to music — it is the dependence upon modulated expres- 
sion — which gives to this branch of letters a character altogether 
unique, and separates it, in great measure and in a manner not 
sufficiently considered, from ordinary literature ; rendering it in- 
dependent of merely ordinary proprieties ; allowing it, and in 
fact demanding for it, a wide latitude of Law ; absolutely insist- 
ing upon a certain wild license and indefinitiveness — an indefini- 
tiveness recognised by every musician who is not a mere fiddler, 
as an important point in the philosophy of his science — as the 
soul, indeed, of the sensations derivable from its practice — sensa- 



254 GEORGE P. MORRIS. 

tions which bewilder while they enthral — and which would not so 
enthral if they did not so bewilder. 

The sentiments deducible from the conception of sweet sound 
simply, are out of the reach of analysis — although referable, pos- 
sibly, in their last result, to that merely mathematical recognition 
of equality which seems to be the root of all Beauty. Our im- 
pressions of harmony and melody in conjunction, are more readi- 
ly analyzed ; but one thing is certain — that the sentimental plea- 
sure derivable from music, is nearly in the ratio of its indefinitive- 
ness. Give to music any undue decision — imbue it with any very 
determinate tone — and you deprive it at once, of its ethereal, its 
ideal, and, I sincerely believe, of its intrinsic and essential charac- 
ter. You dispel its dream-like luxury : — you dissolve the atmos- 
phere of the mystic in which its whole nature is bound up : — you 
exhaust it of its breath of faery. It then becomes a tangible and 
easily appreciable thing — a conception of the earth, earthy. It will 
not, to be sure, lose all its power to please, but all that I consider the 
distinctiveness of that power. And to the over-cultivated talent, or 
to the unimaginative apprehension, this deprivation of its most deli- 
cate nare will be, not unfrequently, a recommendation. A delermi- 
nateness of expression is sought — and sometimes by composers who 
should know better — is sought as a beauty, rather than rejected as a 
blemish. Thus we have, even from high authorities, attempts at 
absolute imitation in musical sounds. Who can forget, or cease 
to regret, the many errors of this kind into which some great 
minds have fallen, simply through over-estimating the triumphs of 
skill. Who can help lamenting the Battles of Pragues ? What 
man of taste is not ready to laugh, or to weep, over their " guns, 
drums, trumpets, blunderbusses and thunder ?" " Vocal music," 
says L'Abbate Gravina, " ought to imitate the natural language 
of the human feelings and passions, rather than the warbling of 
Canary birds, which our singers, now-a-days, affect so vastly to 
mimic with their quaverings and boasted cadences." This is true 
only so far as the " rather" is concerned. If any music must 
imitate any thing, it were undoubtedly, better that the imitation 
should be limited as Gravina suggests. 

That indefinitiveness which is at least, one of the essentials of 
true music, must, of course, be kept in view by the song-writer ; 



GEORGE P. MORRIS. 255 



while, by the critic, it should always be considered in his estimate 
of the song. It is, in the author, a consciousness — sometimes, 
merely an instinctive appreciation, of this necessity for the inde- 
finite, which imparts to all songs, richly conceived, thiit free, 
affluent, and hearty manner, little scrupulous about niceties of 
phrase, which cannot be better expressed than by the hackneyed 
French word abandonnement^nd. which is so strikingly exemplified 
in both the serious and joyous ballads and carols of our old Eng- 
lish progenitors. Wherever verse has been found most strictly 
married to music, this feature prevails. It is thus the essence of 
all antique song. It is the soul of Homer. It is the spirit of 
Anacreon. It is even the genius of ./Eschylus. Coming down 
to our own times, it is the vital principle in De Beranger. Want- 
ing this quality, no song-writer was ever truly popular, and, foi" 
the reasons assigned, no song-writer need ever expect to be so. 

These views properly understood, it will be seen how baseless 
are the ordinary objections to songs proper, on the score of " con- 
ceit," (to use Johnson's word,) or of hyperbole, or on various 
other grounds tenable enough in respect to poetry not designed 
for music. The " conceit," for example, which some envious 
rivals of Morris have so much objected to — 

Her heart and morning broke together 
In the storm — 

this "conceit" is merely in keeping with the essential spirit of 
the song proper. To all reasonable persons it will be sufficient to 
say that the fervid, hearty, free-spoken songs of Cowley and of 
Donne — more especially of Cunningham, of Harrington and of 
Carew — abound in precisely similar things ; and that they are to 
be met with, plentifully, in the polished pages of Moore and of 
Beranger, who introduce them with thought and retain them after 
mature deliberation. 

Morris is, very decidedly, our best writer of songs — and, in say- 
ing this, I mean to assign him a high rank as poet. For my own 
part, I would much rather have written the best song of a nation 
than its noblest epic. One or two of Hoffman's songs have merit 
— but they are sad echoes of Moore, and even if this were not so 
(every body knows that it is so) they are totally deficient in the 
real song-essence. " Woodman, Spare that Tree" and " By the 



256 GEORGE P. MORRIS. 



Lake where droops the Willow" are compositions of which any 
poet, living or dead, might justly be proud. By these, if by 
nothing else, Morris is immortal. It is quite impossible to put 
down such things by sneers. The affectation of contemning them 
is of no avail — unless to render manifest the envy of those who 
affect the contempt. As mere poems, there are several of Morris's 
compositions equal, if not superior, to either of those just men- 
tioned, but as songs I much doubt whether these latter have ever 
been surpassed. In quiet grace and unaffected tenderness, I know 
no American poem which excels the following : 

Where Hudson's wave o'er silvery sands 

Winds through the hills afar, 
Old Crow-nest Tike a monarch stands, 

Crowned with a single star. 
And there, amid the billowy swells 

Of rock-ribbed, cloud-capped earth, 
My fair and gentle Ida dwells, 

A nymph of mountain birth. 

The snow-flake that the cliff receives — 

The diamonds of the showers — 
Springs tender blossoms, buds and leaves — 

The sisterhood of flowers — 
Morn's early beam — eve's balmy breeze — 

Her purity define ; — 
But Ida's dearer far than these 

To this fond breast of mine. 

My heart is on the hills ; the shades 

Of night are on my brow. 
Ye pleasant haunts and silent glades 

My soul is with you now. 
I bless the star-crowned Highlands where 

My Ida's footsteps roam : 
Oh, for a falcon's wing to bear — • 

To bear me to my home. 



ROBERT M. BIRD. 257 



ROBERT M. BIRD. 

By The Gladiator, by Calavar, and by The Infidel, Dr. Bird 
lias risen, in a comparatively short space of time, to a very en- 
viable reputation ; and we have heard it asserted that his' novel 
" The Hawks of Hawk- Hollow?* will not fail to place his name 
in the very first rank of American writers of fiction. Without 
venturing to subscribe implicitly to this latter supposition, we 
still think very highly of him who has written Calavar. 

Had this novel reached us some years ago, with the title of 
" The Hawks of Hawk-Hollow : A Romance by the author of 
Waver ley? we should not perhaps have engaged in its perusal 
with as much genuine eagerness, or with so dogged a determina- 
tion to be pleased with it at all events, as we have actually done 
upon receiving it with its proper title, and under really existing 
circumstances. But having read the book through, as undoubt- 
edly we should have done, if only for the sake of Auld Lang 
Syne, and for the sake of certain pleasantly mirthful, or pleas- 
antly mournful recollections connected with Ivanhoe, with the 
Antiquary, with Kenilworth, and above all, with that most pure, 
perfect, and radiant gem of fictitious literature, the Bride of 
Lammermuir — having, we say, on this account, and for the sake 
of these recollections read the novel from beginning to end, from 
Aleph to Tau, we should have pronounced our opinion of its 
merits somewhat in the following manner. 

" It is unnecessary to tell us that this novel is written by Sir 
Walter Scott ; and we are really glad to find that he has at 
length ventured to turn his attention to American incidents, 
scenery, and manners. We repeat that it was a mere act of su- 
pererogation to place the words " By the author of Waverley" in 
the title-page. The book speaks for itself. The style vulgarly so 
called — the manner properly so called — the handling of the sub- 
ject to speak pictorially, or graphically, or as a German would 

* The Hawks of Hawk-Hollow: a Tradition of Pennsylvania. By the 
author of Calavar and the Infidel. Philadelphia : Carey, Lea & Blanchard. 



258 ROBERT M. BIRD. 



say plastically — in a word, the general air, the tout ensemble, the 
prevailing character of the story, all proclaim, in words which 
one who runs may read, that these volumes were indited ' By the 
author of Waverley.' " Having said thus much, we should re- 
sume our critique as follows : " The Hawks of Hawk-Hollow is, 
however, by no means in the best manner of its illustrious author. 
To speak plainly it is a positive failure, and must take its place 
by the side of the Redgauntlets, the Monasteries, the Pirates, and 
the Saint Ronan's Wells." 

All this we should perhaps have been induced to say had the 
book been offered to us for perusal some few years ago, with the 
supposititious title, and under the supposititious circumstances 
aforesaid. But alas ! for our critical independency, the case is 
very different indeed. There can be no mistake or misconception 
in the present instance, such as we have so fancifully imagined. 
The title page (here we have it) is clear, explanatory, and not to 
be misunderstood. The " Hawks of Hawk-Hollow, A Tradition 
of Pennsylvania," that is to say, a novel, is written, so we are as- 
sured, not by the author of " Waverley," but by the author of that 
very fine romance " Calavar" — not by Sir Walter Scott, Baronet, 
but by Robert M. Bird, M. D. Now Robert M. Bird is an 
American. 

In regard to that purely mechanical portion of this novel, 
which it would now be fashionable to denominate its style, we 
have very few observations to make. In general it is faultless. 
Occasionally we meet with a sentence ill-constructed — an inarti- 
ficial adaptation of the end to the beginning of a paragraph — a 
circumlocutory mode of saying what might have been better said, 
if said with brevity — now and then with a pleonasm, as for ex- 
ample — " And if he wore a mask in his commerce with men, it 
was like that iron one of the Bastile, which when put on, was 
put on for life, and was at the same time of iron" — not unfre- 
quently with a bull proper, videlicet. " As he spoke there came 
into the den, eight men attired like the two first who were in- 
cluded in the number? But we repeat that upon the whole the 
style of the novel — if that may be called its style, which style is 
not — is at least equal to that of any American writer whatsoever. 
In the style projierly so called — that is to say, in the prevailing 



ROBERT M. BIRD. 259 



tone and manner which give character and individuality to the 
book, we cannot bring ourselves to think that Dr. Bird has been 
equally fortunate. His subject appears always ready to fly away 
from him. He dallies with it continually — hovers incessantly 
round it, and about it—and not until driven to exertion by the 
necessity of bringing his volumes to a close, does he finally grasp 
it with any appearance of energy or good will. The " Hawks of 
Hawk-Hollow " is composed with great inequality of manner — at 
times forcible and manly — at times sinking into the merest child- 
ishness and imbecility. Some portions of the book, we surmise, 
were either not written by Dr. Bird, or were written by him in 
moments of the most utter mental exhaustion. On the othei 
hand, the reader will not be disappointed, if he looks to find in 
the novel many — very many well sustained passages of great 
eloquence and beauty. 

The Hawks of Hawk-Hollow, if it add a single bay to the al- 
ready green wreath of Dr. Bird's popular reputation, will not, 
at all events, among men whose decisions are entitled to con- 
sideration, advance the high opinion previously entertained of his 
abilities. It has no pretensions to originality of manner, or of 
style — for we insist upon the distinction — and very few to origi- 
nality of matter. It is, in man; respects, a bad imitation of Sir 
"Walter Scott. Some of its characters, and one or two of its in- 
cidents, have seldom been surpassed, for force, fidelity to nature, 
and power of exciting interest in the reader. It is altogether 
more worthy of its author in its scenes of hurry, of tumult, and 
confusion, than in those of a more quiet and philosophical na- 
ture. Like Calavar and The Infidel, it excels in the drama of 
action and passion, and fails in the drama of colloquy. It is in- 
ferior, as a whole, to the Infidel, and vastly inferior to Calavar. 



"We must regard " Sheppard Lee," upon the whole, as a very 
clever, and not altogether unoriginal, jeu d' esprit. Its incidents 
are well conceived, and related with force, brevity, and a species 
of directness which is invaluable in certain cases of narration — 
while in others it should be avoided. The language is exceed- 
ingly unaffected and (what we regard as high praise) exceedingly 
well adapted to the varying subjects. Some fault may be found 



260 ROBERT M. BIRD. 



with the conception of the metempsychosis which is the basis of 
the narrative. There are two general methods of telling stories 
such as this. One of these methods is that adopted by the au- 
thor of Sheppard Lee. He conceives his hero endowed with 
some idiosyncracy beyond the common lot of human nature, and 
thus introduces him to a series of adventure which, under or- 
dinary circumstances, could occur only to a plurality of persons. 
The chief source of interest in such narrative is, or should be, 
the contrasting of these varied events, in their influence upon a 
character unchanging — except as changed by the events them- 
selves. This fruitful field of interest, however, is neglected in 
the novel before us, where the hero, very awkwardly, partially 
loses, and partially does not lose, his identity, at each transmi- 
gration. The sole object here in the various metempsychoses 
seems to be, merely the depicting of seven different conditions 
of existence, and the enforcement of the very doubtful moral 
that every person should remain contented with his own. But 
it is clear that both these points could have been more forcibly 
shown, without any reference to a confused and jarring system 
of transmigration, by the mere narrations of seven different in- 
dividuals. All deviations, especially wide ones, from nature, 
should be justified to the author by some specific object — the 
object, in the present case, might have been found, as above- 
mentioned, in the opportunity afforded of depicting widely-dif- 
ferent conditions of existence actuating one individual. 

A second peculiarity of the species of novel to which Shep- 
pard Lee belongs, and a peculiarity which is not rejected by the 
author, is the treating the whole narrative in a jocular manner 
throughout (inasmuch as to say " I know I am writing nonsense, 
but then you must excuse me for the very reason that I know 
it,") or the solution of the various absurdities by means of a 
dream, or something similar. The latter method is adopted in 
the present instance — and the idea is managed with unusual in- 
genuity. Still — having read through the whole book, and having 
been worried to death with incongruities (allowing such to exist) 
until the concluding page, it is certainly little indemnification 
for our sufferings to learn that, in truth, the whole matter was a 
dream, and that we were very wrong in being worried about it at all. 



ROBERT M. BIRD. 261 



The damage is done, and the apology does not remedy the griev- 
ance. For this and other reasons, we are led to prefer, in this 
kind of writing, the second general method to which we have al- 
luded. It consists in a variety of points — principally in avoiding, 
as may easily be done, that directness of expression which we have 
noticed in Sheppard Lee, and thus leaving much to the imagina- 
tion — in writing as if the author were firmly impressed with the 
truth, yet astonished at the immensity of the wonders he relates, 
and for which, professedly, he neither claims nor anticipates cre- 
dence — in minuteness of detail, especially upon points which 
have no immediate bearing upon the general story — this minute- 
ness not being at variance with indirectness of expression — in 
short, by making use of the infinity of arts which give verisimili- 
tude to a narration — and by leaving the result as a wonder not to 
be accounted for. It will be found that bizzarreries thus con- 
ducted, are usually far more effective than those otherwise man- 
aged. The attention of the author, who does not depend upon 
explaining away his incredibilities, is directed to giving them the 
character and the luminousness of truth, and thus are brought 
about; unwittingly, some of the most vivid creations of human in- 
tellect. The reader, too, readily perceives and falls in with the 
writer's humor, and suffers himself to be borne on thereby. On 
the other hand, what difficulty, or inconvenience, or danger can 
there be in leaving us uninformed of the important facts that a 
certain hero did not actually discover the elixir vitae, could not 
really make himself really invisible, and was not either a ghost in 
good earnest, or a bona fide wandering Jew ? 



262 CORNELIUS MATHEWS. 



CORNELIUS MATHEWS.* 

" Wakondah" is the composition of Mr. Cornelius Mathews, 
one of the editors of the Monthly Magazine, " Arcturus." In the 
December number of the journal, the poem was originally set 
forth by its author, very much " avec Vair d'un komme qui sauve 
sa patrie.' 1 To be sure, it was not what is usually termed the 
leading article of the month. It did not occupy that post of honor 
which, hitherto, has been so modestly filled by " Puffer Hopkins." 
But it took precedence of some exceedingly beautiful stanzas by 
Professor Longfellow, and stood second only to a very serious ac- 
count of a supper which, however well it might have suited the 
taste of an Ariel, would scarcely have feasted the Anakim, or sat- 
isfied the appetite of a Grandgousier. The supper was, or might 
have been, a good thing. The poem which succeeded it is not; 
nor can we imagine what has induced Messrs. Curry & Co. to be 
at the trouble of its republication. "We are vexed with these gen- 
tlemen for having thrust this afTair the second time before us. 
They have placed us in a predicament we dislike. In the pages 
of " Arcturus" the poem did not come necessarily under the eye 
of the Magazine critic. There is a tacitly-understood courtesy 
about these matters — a courtesy upon which we need not com- 
ment. The contributed papers in any one journal of the class of 
" Arcturus" are not considered as debateable by any one other. 
General propositions, under the editorial head, are rightly made 
the subject of discussion ; but in speaking of " Wakondah," for 
example, in the pages of our own Magazine, we should have felt as 
if making an occasion. Now, upon our first perusal of the poem 
in question, we were both astonished and grieved that we could 
say, honestly, very little in its praise : — astonished, for by some 
means, not just now altogether intelligible to ourselves, we had 
become imbued with the idea of high poetical talent in Mr. Ma- 
thews : — grieved, because, under the circumstances of his position as 

* Wakondah ; The Master of Life. A Poem. George L. Curry & Co. : 
New York. 



CORNELIUS MATHEWS. 263 

editor of one of the very best journals in the country, we had been 
sincerely anxious to think well of his abilities. Moreover, we felt 
that to speak ill of them, under any circumstances whatever, 
would be to subject ourselves to the charge of envy or jealousy, 
on the part of those who do not personally know us. We, there- 
fore, rejoiced that " Wakondah" was not a topic we were called 
upon to discuss. But the poem is republished, and placed upon 
our table, 'and these very " circumstances of position" which re- 
strained us in the first place, render it a positive duty that we 
speak distinctly in the second. 

And very distinctly shall we speak. In fact, this effusion is a 
dilemma whose horns goad us into frankness and candor — " Jest 
un malheur" to use the words of Victor Hugo, " d'ou on ne pour- 
rait se tirer par des periphrases, par des quemadmodums et des 
verumenirnveros." If we mention it at all, we are forced to em- 
ploy the language of that region where, as Addison has it, " they 
sell the best fish and speak the plainest English." " Wakondah," 
then, from beginning to end, is trash. With the trivial excep- 
tions which we shall designate, it has no merit whatever ; while 
its faults, more numerous than the leaves of Valombrosa, are of 
that rampant class which, if any schoolboy could be found so un- 
informed as to commit them, any schoolboy should be remorse- 
lessly flogged for committing. 

The story, or as the epics have it, the argument, although brief, 
is by no means particularly easy of comprehension. The design 
seems to be based upon a passage in Mr. Irving's " Astoria." He 
tells us that the Indians who inhabit the Chippewyan range of 
mountains, call it the " Crest of the World," and " think that 
Wakondah, or the Master of Life, as they designate the Supreme 
Being, has his residence among these aerial heights." Upon this 
hint Mr. Mathews has proceeded. He introduces us to Wakon- 
dah standing in person upon a mountain-top. He describes his 
appearance, and thinks that a Chinook would be frightened to 
behold it. He causes the " Master of Life " to make a speech, 
which is addressed, generally, to things at large, and particularly 
to the neighboring Woods, Cataracts, Rivers, Pinnacles, Steeps, 
and Lakes — not to mention an Earthquake. But all these (and, 
we think, judiciously) turn a deaf ear to the oration, which, to be 



264 CORNELIUS MATHEWS. 

plain, is scarcely equal to a second-rate Piankitank stump speech. 
In fact, it is a barefaced attempt at animal magnetism, and the 
mountains, &c., do no more than show its potency in resigning 
themselves to sleep, as they do. 

Then shone Wakondah's dreadful eyes. 
— then he becomes very indignant, and accordingly launches forth 
into speech the second — with which the delinquents are afflicted, 
with occasional brief interruptions from the poet, in proper per- 
son, until the conclusion of the poem. 

The subject of the two orations we shall be permitted to sum 
up compendiously in the one term " rigmarole." But we do not 
mean to say that our compendium is not an improvement, and a 
very considerable one, upon the speeches themselves — which, taken 
altogether, are the queerest, and the most rhetorical, not to say 
the most miscellaneous orations we ever remember to have lis- 
tened to outside of an Arkansas House of Delegates. In saying 
this we mean what we say. We intend no joke. Were it pos- 
sible, we would quote the whole poem in support of our opinion. 
But as this is not possible, and, moreover, as we presume Mr. Ma- 
thews has not been so negligent as to omit securing his valuable 
property by a copyright, we must be contented with a few ex- 
tracts here and there at random, with a few comments equally so. 
But we have already hinted that there were really one or two 
words to be said of this effusion in the way of commendation, 
and these one or two words might as well be said now as here- 
after. The poem thus commences — 

The moon ascends the vaulted sky to-night ; 
"With a slow motion full of pomp ascends, 
But, mightier than the moon that o'er it bends, 

A form is dwelling on the mountain height 

That boldly intercepts the struggling light 
With darkness nobler than the planet's fire, — 
A gloom and dreadful grandeur that aspire 

To match the cheerful Heaven's far-shining might. 

If we were to shut our eyes to the repetition of " might," 
(which, in its various inflections, is a pet word with our author, 
and lugged in upon all occasions,) and to the obvious imitation of 
Longfellow's Hymn to the Night, in the second line of this stanza, 
we should be justified in calling it good. The " darkness nobler 



CORNELIUS MATHEWS. 265 

than the planet's fire " is certainly good. The general conception 
of the colossal figure on the mountain summit, relieved against 
the full moon, would be unquestionably grand were it not for the 
bullish phraseology by which the conception is rendered, in a 
great measure, abortive. The moon is described as " ascending," 
and its " motion " is referred to, while we have the standing figure 
continuously intercepting its light. That the orb would soon pass 
from behind the figure, is a physical fact which the purpose of the 
poet required to be left out of sight, and which scarcely any other 
language than that which he has actually employed would have 
succeeded in forcing upon the reader's attention. With all these 
defects, however, the passage, especially as an opening passage, is 
one of high merit. Looking carefully for something else to be 
commended, we find at length the lines — 

Lo ! where our foe up through these vales ascends, 
Fresh from the embraces of the swelling sea, 
A glorious, white and shining Deity. 

Upon our strength his deep blue eye he bends, 

With threatenings full of thought and steadfast ends ; 
While desolation from his nostril breathes 
His glittering rage he scornfully unsheathes 

And to the startled air its splendor lends. 

This again, however, is worth only qualified commendation. 
The first six lines preserve the personification (that of a ship) suf- 
ficiently well ; but, in the seventh and eighth, the author suffers 
the image to slide into that of a warrior unsheathing his sword. 
Still there is force in these concluding verses, and we begin to 
fancy that this is saying a very great deal for the author of " Puf- 
fer Hopkins." 

The best stanza in the poem (there are thirty-four in all) is the 
thirty-third. 

No cloud was on the moon, yet on his brow 
A deepening shadow fell, and on his knees 
That shook like tempest-stricken mountain trees 
His heavy head descended sad and low 
Like a high city smitten by the blow 

Which secret earthquakes strike and topling falls 
With all its arches, towers, and cathedrals 
In swift and unconjectured overthrow. 

This is, positively, not bad. The first line italicized is bold and 
vigorous, both in thought and expression ; and the four last 
(although bv no means original) convey a striking picture. But 

Vol. III.— 12. 



266 CORNELIUS MATHEWS. 

then the whole idea, in its general want of keeping, is preposter- 
ous. What is more absurd than the conception of a man's head 
descending to his knees, as here described — the thing could not be 
done by an Indian juggler or a man of gum-caoutchouc — and what 
is more inappropriate than the resemblance attempted to be drawn 
between a single head descending, and the innumerable pinnacles 
of a falling city ? It is difficult to understand, en passant, why 
Mr. Mathews has thought proper to give " cathedrals" a quantity 
which does not belong to it, or to write " unconjectured" when 
the rhythm might have been fulfilled by " unexpected," and when 
"unexpected" would have fully conveyed the meaning which 
" unconjectured" does not. 

By dint of farther microscopic survey, we are enabled to point 
out one, and alas, only one more good line in the poem. 
Green dells that into silence stretch away 

contains a richly poetical thought, melodiously embodied. We 
only refrain, however, from declaring, flatly, that the line is not 
the property of Mr. Mathews, because we have not at hand the 
volume from which we believe it to be stolen. We quote the 
sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth stanzas in full. They will serve 
to convey some faint idea of the general poem. The italics are 
our own. 

The spirit lowers and speaks : " Tremble ye wild Woods ! 

Ye Cataracts ! your organ-voices sound ! 

Deep Crags, in earth by massy tenures bound, 
Oh, Earthquake, level fiat I The peace that broods 
Above this world, and steadfastly eludes 

Your power, howl "Winds and break ; the peace that mocks 

Dismay 'mid silent streams and voiceless rocks — 
Through wildernesses, cliffs, and solitudes. 

" Night-shadowed Rivers — lift your dusky hands 

And clap them harshly with a sullen roar ! 

Ye thousand Pinnacles and Steeps deplore 
The glory that departs ! above you stands, 
Ye Lakes with azure waves and snowy strands, 

A power that utters forth his loud behest 

Till mountain, lake and river shall attest, 
The puissance of a Master's large commands? 

So spake the Spirit with a wide-cast look 

Of bounteous power and cheerful majesty ; 

As if he caught a sight of either sea 
And all the subject realm between : then shook 
His brandished arras ; his stature scarce could brook 



CORNELIUS MATHEWS. 267 

Its confine ; swelling wide, it seemed to grow 
As grows a cedar on a mountain's brow 
By the mad air in ruffling breezes took ! 

The woods are deaf and will not be aroused — 

The mountains are asleep, they hear bim not, 

Nor from deep-founded silence can be wrought, 
Tho' herded bison on their steeps have browsed : 
Beneath their banks in darksome stillness housed 

The rivers loiter like a calm-bound sea ; 

In anchored nuptials to dumb apathy 
Cliff, wilderness and solitude are spoused. 

Let us endeavor to translate this gibberish, by way of ascertain- 
ing its import, if possible. Or, rather, let us state the stanzas, in 
substance. The spirit lowers, that is to say, grows angry, and 
speaks. He calls upon the Wild Woods to tremble, and upon 
the Cataracts to sound their voices which have the tone of an 
organ. He addresses, then, an Earthquake, or perhaps Earth- 
quake in general, and requests it to level flat all the Deep Crags 
which are bound by massy tenures in earth — a request, by the 
way, which any sensible Earthquake must have regarded as tauto- 
logical, since it is difficult to level anything otherwise than flat: — 
Mr. Mathews, however, is no doubt the best judge of flatness in 
the abstract, and may have peculiar ideas respecting it. But to 
proceed with the Spirit. Turning to the Winds, he enjoins them 
to howl and break the peace that broods above this world and 
steadfastly eludes their power — the same peace that mocks a Dis- 
may 'mid streams, rocks, et cetera. He now speaks to the night- 
shadowed Rivers, and commands them to lift their dusky hands, 
and clap them harshly with a sullen roar — and as roaring with 
one's hands is not the easiest matter in the world, we can only 
conclude that the Rivers here reluctantly disobeyed the injunc- 
tion. Nothing daunted, however, the Spirit, addressing a thou- 
sand Pinnacles and Steeps, desires them to deplore the glory that 
departs, or is departing — and we can almost fancy that we see 
the Pinnacles deploring it upon the spot. The Lakes — at least 
such of them as possess azure waves and snowy strands — then 
come in for their share of the oration. They are called upon to 
observe — to take notice — that above them stands no ordinary 
character — no Piankitank stump orator, or anything of that sort 
— but a Power; — a power, in short, to use the exact words of Mr. 



268 CORNELIUS MATHEWS. 

Mathews, " that utters forth his loud behest, till mountain, lake 
and river shall attest the puissance of a Master's large commands." 
Utters forth is no doubt somewhat supererogatory, since " to 
utter" is of itself to emit, or send forth ; but as " the Power" 
appears to be somewhat excited he should be forgiven such mere 
errors of speech. We cannot, however, pass over his boast about 
uttering forth his loud behest till mountain, lake and river shall 
obey him — for the fact is that his threat is vox et preterea nihil y 
like the countryman's nightingale in Catullus ; the issue showing 
that the mountains, lakes and rivers — all very sensible creatures — 
go fast asleep upon the spot, and pay no attention to his rigmarole 
whatever. Upon the " large commands" it is not our intention 
to dwell. The phrase is a singularly mercantile one to be in the 
mouth of " a Power." It is not impossible, however, that Mr. 
Mathews himself is 

— busy in the cotton trade 
And sugar line. 

But to resume. We were originally told that the Spirit " lowered'' 
and spoke, and in truth his entire speech is a scold at Creation ; 
yet stanza the eighth is so forgetful as to say that he spoke " with 
a wide-cast look of bounteous power and cheerful majesty." Be 
this point as it may, he now shakes his brandished arms, and, 
swelling out, seems to grow — 

As grows a cedar on a mountain's top — 
By the mad air in ruffling breezes took 

— or as swells a turkey -gobler ; whose image the poet unques- 
tionably had in his mind's eye when he penned the words about 
the ruffled cedar. As for took instead of taken — why not say tuk 
at once ? We have heard of chaps vot vas tuk up for sheep- 
stealing, and we know of one or two that ought to be tuk up for 
murder of the Queen's English. 

We shall never get on. Stanza the ninth assures us that the 
woods are deaf and will not be aroused, that the mountains are 
asleep and so forth — all which Mr. Mathews might have antici- 
pated. But the rest he could not have foreseen. He could not 
have foreknown that " the rivers, housed beneath their banks in 
darksome stillness" would " loiter like a calm-bound sea," and 
still less could he have been aware, unless informed of the fact, 



CORNELIUS MATHEWS. 269 

that " cliff, wilderness and solitude would be spoused in anchored 
nuptials to dumb apathy!" Good Heavens — no! — nobody could 
have anticipated that! Now, Mr. Mathews, we put it to you as 
to a man of veracity — what does it all mean ? 

As when in times to startle and revere. 
This line, of coarse, is an accident on the part of our author. At 
the time of writing it he could not have remembered 

To haunt, to startle, and waylay. 

Here is another accident of imitation ; for seriously, we do not 

mean to assert that it is anything more — 

I urged the dark red hunter in his quest 

Of pard or panther with a gloomy zest ; 

And while through darkling woods they swiftly fare 

Two seeming creatures of the oak-shadowed air, 

I sped the game and fired the follower's breast. 

The line italicized we have seen quoted by some of our daily 

critics as beautiful ; and so, barring the " oak-shadowed air," it is. 

In the meantime Campbell, in " Gertrude of Wyoming," has the 

words 

— the hunter and the deer a shade. 

Campbell stole the idea from our own Freneau, who has the line 

The hunter and the deer a shade. 
Between the two, Mr. Mathews' claim to originality, at this point, 
will, very possibly, fall to the ground. 

It appears to us that the author of " Wakondah" is either very 
innocent or very original about matters of versification. His stanza 
is an ordinary one. If we are not mistaken, it is that employed 
by Campbell in his " Gertrude of Wyoming" — a favorite poem 
of our author's. At all events it is composed of pentameters 
whose rhymes alternate by a simple and fixed rule. But our 
poet's deviations from this rule are so many and so unusually pic- 
turesque, that we scarcely know what to think of them. Some- 
times he introduces an Alexandrine at the close of a stanza ; and 
here we have no right to quarrel with him. It is not usual in 
this metre'; but still he may do it if he pleases. To put an Alex- 
andrine in the middle, or at the beginning, of one of these stanzas 
is droll, to say no more. See stanza third, which commences with 

the verse 

Upon his brow a garland of the woods he wears, 



270 CORNELIUS MATHEWS. 

and stanza twenty-eight, where the last line but one is 

And rivers singing all aloud tho' still unseen. 
Stanza the seventh begins thus 

The Spirit lowers and speaks— tremble ye Wild Woods ! 
Here it must be observed that " wild woods" is not meant for a 
double rhyme. If scanned on the fingers (and we presume Mr. 
Mathews is in the practice of scanning thus) the line is a legiti- 
mate Alexandrine. Nevertheless, it cannot be read. It is like 
nothing under the sun ; except, perhaps, Sir Philip Sidney's 
attempt at English Hexameter in his " Arcadia." Some one or 
two of his verses we remember. For example — 

So to the | woods Love | runs as | -well as | rides to the | palace ; 
Neither lie | bears reve | rence to a | prince nor | pity to a | beggar, 
But like a | point in the | midst of a | circle is | still of a | nearness. 

vVith the aid of an additional spondee or dactyl Mr. Mathews' 
very odd verse might be scanned in the same manner, and would, 
in fact, be a legitimate Hexameter : 

The Spi | rit lowers | and speaks | tremble ye | wild woods. 
Sometimes our poet takes even a higher flight and drops a foot, 
or a half-foot, or, for the matter of that, a foot and a half. Here, 
for example, is a very singular verse to be introduced in a penta- 
meter rhythm — 

Then shone Wakondah's dreadful eyes. 
Here another — 

Yon full-orbed fire shall cease to shine. 

Here, again, are lines in which the rhythm demands an accent 
on impossible syllables. 

But ah winged with what agonies and pangs .... 
Swiftly before me nor care I how vast. . . . 
I see visions denied to mortal eyes. . . . 
Uplifted longer in heaven's western glow. . . . 

But these are trifles. Mr. Mathews is young and we take it for 
granted that he will improve. In the meantime what does he 
mean by spelling lose, loose, and its (the possessive pronoun) it's — ■ 
re-iterated instances of which fashions are to be found passim in 
" Wakondah" ? "What does he mean by writing dare, the present, 
for dared, the perfect ? — see stanza the twelfth. And, as we are 
now in the catachetical vein, we may as well conclude our disser- 
tation at once with a few other similar queries. 



CORNELIUS MATHEWS. 271 

What do you mean, then, Mr. Mathews, by 
A sudden silence like a tempest fell ? 

What do you mean by a " quivered stream ;" " a shapeless 
gloom ;" a " habitable wish ;" " natural blood ;" " oak-shadowed 
air ;" " customary peers" and " thunderous noises ?" 

What do you mean by 

A sorrow mightier than the midnight skies ? 

What do you mean by 

A bulk that swallows up the sea-blue sky ? 

Are you not aware that calling the sky as blue as the sea, is like 
saying of the snow that it is as white as a sheet of paper ? 

What do you mean, in short, by 

Its feathers darker than a thousand fears ? 

Is not this something like " blacker than a dozen and a half of 
chimney-sweeps and a stack of black cats," and are not the whole 
of these illustrative observations of yours somewhat upon the 
plan of that of the witness who described a certain article stolen 
as being of the size and shape of a bit of chalk ? What do you 
mean by them, we say ? 

And here, notwithstanding our earnest wish to satisfy the author 
of Wakondah, it is indispensable that we bring our notice of the 
poem to a close. We feel grieved that our observations have 
been so much at random ; — but at random, after all, is it alone 
possible to convey either the letter or the spirit of that, which, a 
mere jumble of incongruous nonsense, has neither beginning, 
middle, nor end. We should be delighted to proceed — but how ? 
to applaud — but what ? Surely not this trumpery declamation, 
this maudlin sentiment, this metaphor run-mad, this twaddling 
verbiage, this halting and doggrel rhythm, this unintelligible rant 
and cant ! " Slid, if these be your passados and montantes, we'll 
have none of them." Mr. Mathews, you have clearly mistaken 
your vocation, and your effusion as little deserves the title of 
poem, (oh sacred name !) as did the rocks of the royal forest of 
Fontainbleau that of "mes deserts''' bestowed upon them by 
Francis the First. In bidding you adieu we commend to your 
careful consideration the remark of M. Timon, " que le Ministre 
de V Instruction Publique doit lui-meme savoir parler Francais." 



272 WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS. 



WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS.* 

Mr. Simms, we believe, made his first, or nearly his first, ap- 
pearance before an American audience with a small volume en- 
titled " Martin Faber," an amplification of a much shorter fiction. 
He had some difficulty in getting it published, but the Harpers 
finally undertook it, and it did credit to their judgment. It was 
well received both by the public and the more discriminative 
few, although some of the critics objected that the story was an 
imitation of " Miserrimus," a very powerful fiction by the author 
of " Pickwick Abroad." The original tale, however — the germ 
of " Martin Faber " — was written long before the publication of 
" Miserrimus." But independently of this fact, there is not the 
slightest ground for the charge of imitation. The thesis and in- 
cidents of the two works are totally dissimilar ; — the idea of re- 
semblance arises only from the absolute identity of effect wrought 
by both. 

" Martin Faber" was succeeded, at short intervals, by a great 
number and variety of fictions, some brief, but many of the or- 
dinary novel size. Among these we may notice " Guy Rivers," 
" The Partisan," " The Yemassee," " Mellichampe,", " Beau- 
champe," and " Richard Hurdis." The last two were issued 
anonymously, the author wishing to ascertain whether the suc- 
cess of his books (which was great) had anything to do with his 
mere name as the writer of previous works. The result proved 
that popularity, in Mr. Simms' case, arose solely from intrinsic 
merit, for " Beauchampe " and " Richard Hurdis " were the 
most popular of his fictions, and excited very general attention 
and curiosity. " Border Beagles " was another of his anony- 
mous novels, published with the same end in view, and, although 
disfigured by some instances of bad taste, was even more suc- 
cessful than " Richard Hurdis." 

The " bad taste" of the "Border Beagles" was more particu- 

* Wiley & Putnam's Library of American Books. No. IV. The Wig- 
wam and the Cabin. By William Gilmore Simms. First Series. 



WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS. 213 

larly apparent in "The Partisan," "The Yemassee," and one 
or two other of the author's earlier works, and displayed itself 
most offensively in a certain fondness for the purely disgusting or 
repulsive, where the intention was or should have been merely 
the horrible. The writer evinced a strange propensity for minute 
details of human and brute suffering, and even indulged at times 
in more unequivocal obscenities. His English, too, was, in his 
efforts, exceedingly objectionable — verbose, involute, and not un- 
frequently ungrammatical. He was especially given to pet words, 
of which we remember at present only " hug? " coil? and the 
compound " old-time? and introduced them upon all occasions. 
Neither was he at this period particularly dexterous in the con- 
duct of his stories. His improvement, however, was rapid at all 
these points, although, on the two first counts of our indictment, 
there is still abundant room for improvement. But whatever 
may have been his early defects, or whatever are his present 
errors, there can be no doubt that from the very beginning he 
gave evidence of genius, and that of no common order. His 
" Martin Faber," in our opinion, is a more forcible story than its 
supposed prototype " Miserrimus." The difference in the Ame- 
rican reception of the two is to be referred to the fact (we blush 
while recording it,) that "Miserrimus" was understood to be 
the work of an Englishman, and " Martin Faber " was known to 
be the composition of an American as yet unaccredited in our 
Republic of Letters. The fiction of Mr. Simms gave indication, 
we repeat, of genius, and that of no common order. Had he 
been even a Yankee, this genius would have been rendered imme- 
diately manifest to his countrymen, but unhappily (perhaps) he 
was a southerner, and united the southern pride — the southern 
dislike to the making of bargains — with the southern supineness 
and general want of tact in all matters relating to the making of 
money. His book, therefore, depended entirely upon its own in- 
trinsic value and resources, but with these it made its way in the 
end. The " intrinsic value" consisted first of a very vigorous 
imagination in the conception of the story : secondly, in -artistic 
skill manifested in its conduct ; thirdly, in general vigor, life, 
movement — the whole resulting in deep interest on the part of 
the reader. These high qualities Mr. Simms has carried with 

12* 



274 WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS. 

him in his subsequent books ; and they are qualities which, above 
all others, the fresh and vigorous intellect of America should and 
does esteem. It may be said, upon the whole, that while there 
are several of our native writers who excel the author of " Mar- 
tin Faber " at particular points, there is, nevertheless, not one 
who surpasses him in the aggregate of the higher excellences of 
fiction. We confidently expect him to do much for the lighter 
literature of his country. 

The volume now before us has a title which may mislead the 
reader. " The Wigwam and the Cabin " is merely a generic 
phrase, intended to designate the subject matter of a series of 
short tales, most of which have first seen the light in the An- 
nuals. " The material employed," says the author, " will be 
found to illustrate in large degree, the border history of the 
south. I can speak with confidence of the general truthfulness 
of its treatment. The life of the planter, the squatter, the In- 
dian, the negro, the bold and hardy pioneer, and the vigorous 
yeoman — these are the subjects. In their delineation I have 
mostly drawn from living portraits, and, in frequent instances, 
from actual scenes and circumstances within the memories of 
men." 

All the tales in this collection have merit, and the first has 
merit of a very peculiar kind. " Grayling, or Murder will Out," 
is the title. The story was well received in England, but on 
this fact no opinion can be safely based. " The Athenaeum," 
we believe, or some other of the London weekly critical jour- 
nals, having its attention called (no doubt through personal in- 
fluence) to Carey & Hart's beautiful annual " The Gift," found 
it convenient, in the course of its notice, to speak at length of 
some one particular article, and " Murder Will Out " probably 
arrested the attention of the sub-editor who was employed in so 
trivial a task as the patting on the head an American book — ar- 
rested his attention first from its title, (murder being a taking- 
theme with the cockney,) and secondly, from its details of south- 
ern forest scenery. Large quotations were made, as a matter of 
course, and very ample commendation bestowed — the whole criti- 
cism proving nothing, in our opinion, but that the critic had not 
read a single syllable of the story. The critique, however, had 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 275 

at least the good effect of calling American attention to the fact 
that an American might possibly do a decent thing, (provided 
the possibility were first admitted by the British sub-editors,) 
and the result was first, that many persons read, and secondly, 
that all persons admired the "excellent story in 'The Gift' that 
had actually been called ' readable' by one of the English news- 
papers." 

Now had " Murder Will Out " been a much worse story than 
was ever written by Professor Ingraham, still, under the circum- 
stances, we patriotic and independent Americans would have de- 
clared it inimitable ; but, by some species of odd accident, it 
happened to deserve all that the British sub-sub had conde- 
scended to say of it, on the strength of a guess as to what it was 
all about. It is really an admirable tale, nobly conceived, and 
skilfully carried into execution — the best ghost-story ever written 
by an American — for we presume that this is the ultimate extent 
of commendation to which we, as an humble American, dare go. 

The other stories of the volume do credit to the author's abili- 
ties, and display their peculiarities in a strong light, but there is 
no one of them so good as " Murder Will Out." 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.* 

What have we Americans accomplished in the way of Satire ? 
" The Vision of Rubeta," by Laughton Osborn, is probably our 
best composition of the kind : but, in saying this, we intend no 
excessive commendation. Trumbull's clumsy and imitative work 
is scarcely worth mention — and then we have Halleck's " Croak- 
ers," local and ephemeral — but what is there besides ? Park 
Benjamin has written a clever address, with the title " Infatua- 
tion," and Holmes has an occasional scrap, piquant enough in its 
way — but we can think of nothing more that can be fairly called 
" satire." Some matters we have produced, to be sure, which 
were excellent in the way of burlesque — (the Poems of William 
Ellery Channing, for example) — without meaning a syllable that 
was not utterly solemn and serious. Odes, ballads, songs, son- 

* A Fable for the Critics. New York : George P. Putnam, 



216 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

nets, epics and epigrams, possessed of this unintentional excellence, 
we should have no difficulty in designating by the dozen ; but in 
the particular of direct and obvious satire, it cannot be denied 
that we are unaccountably deficient. 

It has been suggested that this deficiency arises from the want 
of a suitable field for satirical display. In England, it is said, 
satire abounds, because the people there find a proper target in 
the aristocracy, whom they (the people) regard as a distinct race 
with whom they have little in common ; relishing even the most 
virulent abuse of the upper classes with a gusto undiminished by 
any feeling that they (the people) have any concern in it. In Rus- 
sia, or Austria, on the other hand, it is urged, satire is unknown ; 
because there is danger in touching the aristocracy, and self-satire 
would be odious to the mass. In America, also, the people who 
write are, it is maintained, the people who read : — thus in satir- 
izing the people we satirize only ourselves, and are never in con- 
dition to sympathize with the satire. 

All this is more verisimilar than true. It is forgotten that no 
individual considers himself as one of the mass. Each person, in 
his own estimate, is the pivot on which all the rest of the world 
spins round. We may abuse the people by wholesale, and yet 
with a clear conscience, so far as regards any compunction for 
offending any one from among the multitude of which that " peo- 
ple" is composed. Every one of the crowd will cry " Encore ! — 
give it to them, the vagabonds ! — -it serves them right." It seems 
to us that, in America, we have refused to encourage satire — not 
because what we have had touches us too nearly — but because it 
has been too pointless to touch us at all. Its namby-pambyism 
has arisen, in part, from the general want, among our men of let- 
ters, of that minute polish — of that skill in details — which, in 
combination with natural sarcastic power, satire, more than any 
other form of literature, so imperatively demands. In part, also, 
we may attribute our failure to the colonial sin of imitation. We 
content ourselves — at this point not less supinely than at all 
others — with doing what not only has been done before, but 
what, however well done, has yet been done ad nauseam. We 
should not be able to endure infinite repetitions of even absolute 
excellence ; but what is " McFingal" more than a faint echo from 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 211 

" Hudibras" ? — and what is " The Vision of Rubeta" more than 
a vast gilded swill-trough overflowing with Dunciad and water ? 
Although we are not all Archilochuses, however — although we 
have few pretensions to the nx £r i VT ^ ia ^t — although, in short, we 
are no satirists ourselves — there can be no question that we an- 
swer sufficiently well as subjects for satire. 

" The Vision" is bold enough — if we leave out of sight its 
anonymous issue — and bitter enough, and witty enough, if we 
forget its pitiable punning on names — and long enough (Heaven 
knows) and well constructed and decently versified ; but it fails 
in the principal element of all satire — sarcasm—because the in- 
tention to be sarcastic (as in the " English Bards and Scotch Re- 
viewers," and in all the more classical satires) is permitted to 
render itself manifest. The malevolence appeal's. The author is 
never very severe, because he is at no time particularly cool. We 
laugh not so much at his victims as at himself, for letting them 
put him in such a passion. And where a deeper sentiment than 
mirth is excited — where it is pity or contempt that we are made 
to feel — the feeling is too often reflected, in its object, from the 
satirized to the satirist — with whom we sympathize in the discom- 
fort of his animosity. Mr. Osborn has not many superiors in 
downright invective ; but this is the awkward left arm of the sa- 
tiric Muse. That satire alone is worth talking about which at 
least appears to be the genial, good-humored outpouring of irre- 
pressible merriment. 

" The Fable for the Critics," just issued, has not the name of its 
author on the title-page ; and but for some slight fore-knowledge 
of the literary opinions, likes, dislikes, whims, prejudices and 
crotchets of Mr. James Russell Lowell, we should have had much 
difficulty in attributing so very loose a brochure to him. The 
" Fable" is essentially " loose" — ill-conceived and feebly executed, 
as well in detail as in general. Some good hints and some spark- 
ling witticisms do not serve to compensate us for its rambling plot 
(if plot it can be called) and for the want of artistic finish so par- 
ticularly noticeable throughout the work — especially in its versifi- 
cation. In Mr. Lowell's prose efforts we have before observed a 
certain disjointedness, but never, until now, in his verse — and we 
confess some surprise at his putting forth so unpolished a per- 



278 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

formance. The author of " The Legend of Brittany" (which is 
decidedly the noblest poem, of the same length, written by an 
American) could not do a better thing than to take the advice of 
those who mean him well, in spite of his fanaticism, and leave 
prose, with satiric verse, to those who are better able to manage 
them ; while he contents himself with that class of poetry for 
which, and for which alone, he seems to have an especial vocation — 
the poetry of sentiment. This, to be sure, is not the very loftiest 
order of verse ; for it is far inferior to either that of the imagina- 
tion or that of the passions — but it is the loftiest region in which 
Mr. Lowell can get his breath without difficulty. 

Our primary objection to this " Fable for the Critics" has 
reference to a point which we have already touched in a general 
way. " The malevolence appears." We laugh not so much at 
the author's victims as at himself, for letting them put him in 
such a passion. The very title of the book shows the want of a 
due sense in respect to the satirical essence, sarcasm. This " fa- 
ble" — this severe lesson — is meant "for the Critics.'''' " Ah !" 
we say to ourselves at once — " we see how it is. Mr. L. is a poor- 
devil poet, and some critic has been reviewing him, and making 
him feel very uncomfortable ; whereupon, bearing in mind that 
Lord Byron, when similarly assailed, avenged his wrongs in a 
satire which he called ' English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,' he 
(Mr. Lowell) imitative as usual, has been endeavoring to get re- 
dress in a parallel manner — by a satire with a parallel title — ' A 
Fable for the Critics.' " 

All this the reader says to himself ; and all this tells against 
Mr. L. in two ways — first, by suggesting unlucky comparisons 
between Byron and Lowell, and, secondly, by reminding us of 
the various criticisms, in which we have been amused (rather ill- 
naturedly) at seeing Mr. Lowell "used up.'' 

The title starts us on this train of thought, and the satire sus- 
tains us in it. Every reader versed in our literary gossip, is at 
once put dessous des cartes as to the particular provocation which 
engendered the " Fable." Miss Margaret Fuller, some time ago, 
in a silly and conceited piece of Transcendentalism, which she 
called an " Essay on American Literature," or something of that 
kind, had the consummate pleasantry, after selecting from the list 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 279 

of American poets, Cornelius Mathews and William Ellery 
Channing, for especial commendation, to speak of Longfellow as 
a booby, and of Lowell as so wretched a poetaster " as to be dis- 
gusting even to his best friends." All this Miss Fuller said, if 
not in our precise words, still in words quite as much to the pur- 
pose. Why she said it, Heaven only knows — unless it was be- 
cause she was Margaret Fuller, and wished to be taken for nobody 
else. Messrs. Longfellow and Lowell, so pointedly picked out for 
abuse as the ivorst of our poets, are, upon the whole, perhaps, 
our best — although Bryant, and one or two others are scarcely 
inferior. As for the two favorites, selected just as pointedly for 
laudation, by Miss F. — it is really difficult to think of them, in 
connexion with poetry, without laughing. Mr. Mathews once 
wrote some sonnets " On Man," and Mr. Channing some lines on 
" A Tin Can," or something of that kind — and if the former gen- 
tleman be not the very worst poet that ever existed on the face 
of the earth, it is only because he is not quite so bad as the latter. 
To speak algebraically : — Mr. M. is e.recrable, but Mr. C. is x plus 
I-ecrable. 

Mr. Lowell has obviously aimed his " Fable" at Miss Fuller's 
head, in the first instance, with an eye to its ricochet-ing so as to 
knock down Mr. Mathews in the second. Miss F. is first intro- 
duced as Miss F , rhyming to " cooler," and afterwards as 

" Miranda ;" while poor Mr. M. is brought in upon all occasions, 
head and shoulders ; and now and then a sharp thing, although 
never very original, is said of them or at them ; but all the true 
satiric effect wrought, is that produced by the satirist against him- 
self. The reader is all the time smiling to think that so unsur- 
passable a — {what shall we call her ? — we wish to be civil,) a 
transcendentalist as Miss Fuller, should, by such a criticism, have 
had the power to put a respectable poet in such a passion. 

As for the plot or conduct of this Fable, the less we say of it 
the better. It is so. weak — so flimsy — so ill put together — as to 
be not worth the trouble of understanding : — something, as usual, 
about Apollo and Daphne. Is there no originality on the face of 
the earth ? Mr. Lowell's total want of it is shown at all points — 
very especially in his preface of rhyming verse written without 
distinction by lines or initial capitals, (a hackneyed matter, origi- 



280 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

nating, we believe, with Frazer's Magazine :) — very especially 
also, in his long continuations of some particular rhyme — a fashion 
introduced, if we remember aright, by Leigh Hunt, more than 
twenty-five years ago, in his " Feast of the Poets" — which, by 
the way, has been Mr. L.'s model in many respects. 

Although ill-temper has evidently engendered this " Fable," it 
is by no means a satire throughout. Much of it is devoted to 
panegyric — but our readers would be quite puzzled to know the 
grounds of the author's laudations, in many cases, unless made 
acquainted with a fact which we think it as well they should be 
informed of at once. Mr. Lowell is one of the most rabid of the 
Abolition fanatics ; and no Southerner who does not wish to be 
insulted, and at the same time revolted by a bigotry the most ob- 
stinately blind and deaf, should ever touch a volume by this 
author.* His fanaticism about slavery is a mere local outbreak 
of the same innate wrong-headedness which, if he owned slaves, 
would manifest itself in atrocious ill-treatment of them, with mur- 
der of any abolitionist who should endeavor to set them free. A 
fanatic of Mr. L.'s species, is simply a fanatic for the sake of fanati- 
cism, and must be a fanatic in whatever circumstances you 
place him. 

His prejudices on the topic of slavery break out everywhere in 
his present book. Mr. L. has not the common honesty to speak 
well, even in a literary sense, of any man who is not a ranting 
abolitionist. With the exception of Mr. Poe, (who has written 
some commendatory criticisms on his poems,) no Southerner is 
mentioned at all in this " Fable." It is a fashion among Mr. 
Lowell's set to affect a belief that there is no such thing as South- 
ern Literature. Northerners — people who have really nothing to 
speak of as men of letters, — are cited by the dozen, and lauded by 
this candid critic without stint, while Legare, Simms, Longstreet, 
and others of equal note are passed by in contemptuous silence. 
Mr. L. cannot carry his frail honesty of opinion even so far South 

* This " Fable for the Critics" — this literary satire — this benevolent jeu 
d'esprit is disgraced by such passages as the following : 

Forty fathers of Freedom, of whom twenty bred 
Their sons for the rice swamps at so much a head, 
And their daughters for — faugh ! 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 281 

as New York. All whom he praises are Bostonians. Other 

writers are barbarians, and satirized accordingly — if mentioned 

at all. 

To show the general manner of the Fable, we quote a portion 

of what he says about Mr. Poe : 

Here comes Poe with his Raven, like Barnaby Rudge — 
Three-fifths of him genius, and two-fifths sheer fudge ; 
Who talks like a book of iambs and pentameters, 
In a way to make all men of common sense d — n metres 
Who has written some things far the best of their kind ; 
But somehow the heart seems squeezed out by the mind. 

We may observe here that profound ignorance on any partic- 
ular topic is always sure to manifest itself by soma allusion to 
" common sense " as an all-sufficient instructor. So far from Mr. 
P.'s talking "like a book" on the topic at issue, his chief pur- 
pose has been to demonstrate that there exists no book on the 
subject worth talking about ; and u common sense," after all, 
has been the basis on which he relied, in contradistinction from 
the wwcommon nonsense of Mr. L. and the small pedants. 

And now let us see how far the unusual " common sense " of 
our satirist has availed him in the structure of his verse. First, 
by way of showing what his intention was, we quote three acci- 
dentally accurate lines : 

But a boy | he could ne | ver be right | ly defined. 
As I said j he was ne | ver precise | ly unkind. 
But as Ci | cero says | he won't say | this or that. 

Here it is clearly seen that Mr. L. intends a line of four ana- 
paests. (An anapsest is a foot composed of two short syllables 
followed by a long.) With this observation, we will now simply 
copy a few of the lines which constitute the body of the poem ; 
asking any of our readers to read them if they can ; that is to 
say, we place the question, without argument, on the broad basis 
of the very commonest " common sense." 

They're all from one source, monthly, weekly, diurnal 

Disperse all one's good and condense all one's poor traits. . . . 

The one's two-thirds Norseman, the other half Greek. . . . 

He has imitators in scores who omit. . . . 

Should suck milk, strong will-giving brave, such as runs. . . . 

Along the far rail-road the steam-snake glide white. . . . 

From the same runic type-fount and alphabet 



282 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

Earth has six truest patriots, four discoverers of ether 

Every cockboat that swims clears its fierce (pop) gundeck at him .... 

Is some of it pr no, 'tis not even prose .... 

O'er his principles when something else turns up trumps .... 
But a few silly (syllo I mean) gisms that squat 'em. ... 
Nos, we don't want extra freezing in winter .... 
Plough, dig, sail, forge, build, carve, paint, make all things new. 

But enough : — we have given a fair specimen of the general 
versification. It might have been better — but we are quite sure 
that it could not have been worse. So much for " common sense," 
in Mr. Lowell's understanding of the term. Mr. L. should not 
have meddled with the anapsestic rhythm : it is exceedingly awk- 
ward in the hands of one who knows nothing about it and who 
will persist in fancying that he can write it by ear. Very espe- 
cially, he should have avoided this rhythm in satire, which, more 
than any other branch of Letters, is dependent upon seeming 
trifles for its effect. Two-thirds of the force of the " Dunciad '' 
may be referred to its exquisite finish ; and had " The Fable for 
the Critics" been, (what it is not,) the quintessence of the satiric 
spirit itself, it would nevertheless, in so slovenly a form, have 
failed. As it is, no failure was ever more complete or more piti- 
able. By the publication of a book at once so ambitious and so 
feeble — so malevolent in design and so harmless in execution — a 
work so roughly and clumsily yet so weakly constructed — so very 
different, in body and spirit, from anything that he has written 
before — Mr. Lowell has committed an irrevocable faux pas and 
lowered himself at least fifty per cent in the literary public 
opinion. 



MR. GRISWOLD AND THE POETS. 283 



MR. GRISWOLD AND THE POETS. 

That we are not a poetical people has been asserted so often 
and so roundly, both at home and abroad, that the slander, 
through mere dint of repetition, has come to be received as truth. 
Yet nothing can be farther removed from it. The mistake is but 
a portion, or corollary, of the old dogma, that the calculating 
faculties are at war with the ideal ; while, in fact, it may be 
demonstrated that the two divisions of mental power are never 
to be found in perfection apart. The highest order of the imagi- 
native intellect is always preeminently mathematical; and the 
converse. 

The idiosyncrasy of our political position has stimulated into 
early action whatever practical talent we possessed. Even in our 
national infancy we evinced a degree of utilitarian ability which 
put to shame the mature skill of our forefathers. While yet in 
leading-strings we proved ourselves adepts in all the arts and 
sciences which promote the comfort of the animal man. But the 
arena of exertion, and of consequent distinction, into which our 
first and most obvious wants impelled us, has been regarded as 
the field of our deliberate choice. Our necessities have been 
mistaken for our propensities. Having been forced to make rail- 
roads, it has been deemed impossible that we should make verse. 
Because it suited us to construct an engine in the first instance, it 
has been denied that we could compose an epic in the second. 
Because we were not all Homers in the beginning, it has been 
somewhat too rashly taken for granted that we shall be all 
Jeremy Benthams to the end. 

But this is the purest insanity. The principles of the poetic 
sentiment lie deep within the immortal nature of man, and have 
little necessary reference to the worldly circumstances which sur- 
round him. The poet in Arcady is, in Kamschatka, the poet 
still. The self-same Saxon current animates the British and the 
American heart; nor can any social, or political, or moral, or 
physical conditions do more than momentarily repress the im- 



284 MR. GRISWOLD AND THE POETS. 

pulses which glow in our own bosoms as fervently as in those of 
our progenitors. 

Those who have taken most careful note of our literature for 
the last ten or twelve years, will be most willing to admit that 
we are a poetical people ; and in no respect is the fact more 
plainly evinced than in the eagerness with which books professing 
to compile or select from the productions of our native bards, 
are received and appreciated by the public. Such books meet 
with success, at least with sale, at periods when the general 
market for literary wares is in a state of stagnation ; and even the 
ill taste displayed in some of them has not sufficed to condemn. 

The " Specimens of American Poetry," by Kettell ; the 
". Common-place Book of American Poetry," by Cheever ; a 
Selection by General Morris ; another by Mr. Bryant ; the "Poets 
of America," by Mr. Keese — all these have been widely dissemi- 
nated and well received. In some measure, to be sure, we must 
regard their success as an affair of personalities. Each individual, 
honored with a niche in the compiler's memory, is naturally 
anxious to possess a copy of the book so honoring him ; and this 
anxiety will extend, in some cases, to ten or twenty of the imme- 
diate friends of the complimented ; while, on the other hand, 
purchasers will arise, in no small number, from among a very 
different class — a class animated by very different feelings. I 
mean the omitted — the large body of those who, supposing them- 
selves entitled to mention, have yet been unmentioned. These 
buy the unfortunate book as a matter of course, for the purpose 
of abusing it with a clear conscience and at leisure. But hold- 
ing these deductions in view, we are still warranted in believing 
that the demand for works of the kind in question, is to be 
attributed, mainly, to the general interest of the subject discussed. 
The public have been desirous of obtaining a more distinct view of 
our poetical literature than the scattered effusions of our bards 
and the random criticisms of our periodicals, could afford. But, 
hitherto, nothing has been accomplished in the way of supplying 
the desideratum. The " specimens " of Kettell were specimens 
of nothing but the ignorance and ill taste of the compiler. A 
large proportion of what he gave to the world as American 
poetry, to the exclusion of much that was really so, was the 



MR. GRISWOLD AND THE POETS. 285 

doggerel composition of individuals unheard of and undreamed 
of, except by Mr. Kettell himself. Mr. Cheever's book did not 
belie its title, and was excessively " Common-place." The 
selection by General Morris was in so far good, that it accom- 
plished its object to the full extent. This object looked to noth- 
ing more than single, brief extracts from the writings of every 
one in the country who had established even the slightest reputa- 
tion as a poet. The extracts, so far as our truer poets were con- 
cerned, were tastefully made ; but the proverbial kind feeling of 
the General seduced him into the admission of an inordinate 
quantity of the purest twattle. It was gravely declared that we 
had more than two hundred poets in the land. The compilation 
of Mr. Bryant, from whom much was expected, proved a source 
of mortification to his friends, and of astonishment and disap- 
pointment to all ; merely showing that a poet is, necessarily, 
neither a critical nor an impartial judge of poetry. Mr. Keese 
succeeded much better. He brought to his task, if not the most 
rigorous impartiality, at least a fine taste, a sound judgment, and 
a more thorough acquaintance with our poetical literature than 
had distinguished either of his predecessors. 

Much, however, remained to be done ; and here it may be right 
to inquire — " What should be the aim of every compilation of the 
character now discussed ?" The object, in general terms, may 
be stated, as the conveying, within moderate compass, a distinct 
view of our poetry and of our poets. This, in fact, is the demand 
of the public. A book is required, which shall not so much be the 
reflection of the compiler's peculiar views and opinions upon poetry 
in the abstract, as of the popular judgment upon such poetical 
works as have come immediately within its observation. It is not 
the author's business to insist upon his own theory, and, in its 
support, to rake up from the by-ways of the country the " inglorious 
Miltons " who may, possibly, there abound ; neither, because ill 
according with this theory, is it his duty to dethrone and reject 
those who have long maintained supremacy in the estimation 
of the people. In this view, it will be seen that regard must be 
paid to the mere quantity of a writer's effusions. He who has 
published much, is not to be omitted because, in the opinion of 
the compiler, he has written nothing fit for publication. On the 



286 MR. GRISWOLD AND THE POETS. 

other hand, he who has extemporized a single song, which has 
met the eye of no one but our bibliographer, is not to be set forth 
among the poetical magnates, even although the one song itself 
be esteemed equal to the very best of Beranger. 

Of the two classes of sins — the negative and the positive — 
those of omission and those of commission — obvious ones of the 
former class are, beyond doubt, the more unpardonable. It is 
better to introduce half a dozen " great unknowns," than to give 
the " cut direct " to a single individual who has been fairly 
acknowledged as known. The public, in short, seem to demand 
such a compendium of our poetical literature as shall embrace 
specimens from those ivorks alone, of our recognised poets, which, 
either through accident, or by dint of merit, have been most particu- 
larly the subjects of public discussion. We wish this, that we 
may be put in condition to decide for ourselves upon the justice 
or injustice of the reputation attained. In critical opinion much di- 
versity exists ; and, although there is one true and tenable critical 
opinion, there are still a thousand, upon all topics, which, being only 
the shadows, have all the outlines, and assume all the movements, 
of the substance of truth. Thus any critic who should exclude 
from the compendium all which tallied not with his individual 
ideas of the Muse, would be found to exclude nine hundred and 
ninety-nine thousandths of that which the public at large, embra- 
cing all varieties of opinion, has been accustomed to acknowledge 
as poesy. 

These remarks apply only to the admission or rejection of 
poetical specimens. The public being put fairly in possession of 
the matter debated, with the provisions above mentioned, the 
analysis of individual claims, so far as the specimens extend, is not 
only not unbecoming in the compiler, but a thing to be expected 
and desired. To this department of his work he should bring 
analytical ability ; a distinct impression of the nature, the princi- 
ples, and the aims of poetry ; a thorough contempt for all preju- 
dice at war with principle ; a poetic sense of the poetic ; sagacity 
in the detection, and audacity in the exposure of demerit ; in a 
word talent and faith ; the lofty honor which places mere courtesy 
beneath its feet ; the boldness to praise an enemy, and the more 
unusual courage to damn a friend. 



MR. GRISWOLD AND THE POETS. 287 

It is, in fact, by the criticism of the work, that the public voice 
will, in the end, decide upon its merits. In proportion to the 
ability or incapacity here displayed, will it, sooner or later, be 
approved or condemned. Nevertheless, the mere compilation is 
a point, perhaps, of greater importance. With the meagre pub- 
lished aids existing previously to Mr. Griswold's book, the labor 
of such an undertaking must have been great ; and not less great 
the industry and general information in respect to our literary 
affairs, which have enabled him so successfully to prosecute it. 

The work before us* is indeed so vast an improvement upon 
those of a similar character which have preceded it, that we do 
its author some wrong in classing all together. Having explained, 
somewhat minutely, our views of the proper mode of compilation, 
and of the general aims of the species of book in question, it but 
remains to say that these views have been very nearly fulfilled in 
the u Poets and Poetry of America," while altogether unsatisfied 
by the earlier publications. 

The volume opens with a preface, which, with some little 

supererogation, is addressed " To the Reader ;" inducing very 

naturally the query, whether the whole book is not addressed to 

the same individual. In this preface, which is remarkably well 

written and strictly to the purpose, the author thus evinces a just 

comprehension of the nature and objects of true poes}^ : 

He who looks on Lake George, or sees the sun rise on Mackinaw, or listens 
to the grand music of a storm, is divested, certainly for a time, of a portion 
of the alloy of his nature. The elements of power in all sublime sights and 
heavenly harmonies, should live in the poet's song, to which they can be 
transferred only by him who possesses the creative faculty. The sense of 
beauty, next to the miraculous divine suasion, is the means through which 
the human character is purified and elevated. The creation of beauty, the 
manifestation of the real by the ideal, " in words that move in metrical 
array? is poetry. 

The italics are our own ; and we quote the passage because it 
embodies the sole true definition of what has been a thousand 
times erroneously defined. 

The earliest specimens of poetry presented in the body of the 
work, are from the writings of Philip Freneau, " one of those 
worthies who, both with lyre and sword, aided in the achievement 

The Poets and Poetry of America : with an Historical Introduction. By 
Rufus W. Griswold. Philadelphia : Carey & Hart. 



288 MR. GRISWOLD AND THE POETS. 

of our independence." But, in a volume professing to treat, 
generally, of the " Poets and Poetry of America," some mention 
of those who versified before Freneau, would of course, be con- 
sidered desirable. Mr. Griswold has included, therefore, most of 
our earlier votaries of the Muse, with many specimens of their 
powers, in an exceedingly valuable "Historical Introduction;" his 
design being to exhibit as well " the progress as the condition of 
poetry in the United States." 

The basis of the compilation is formed of short biographical 
and critical notices, with selections from the works of, in all, 
eighty-seven authors, chronologically arranged. In an appendix 
at the end of the volume, are included specimens from the works 
of sixty, whose compositions have either been too few, or in the 
editor's opinion too mediocres, to entitle them to more particular 
notice. To each of these specimens are appended foot notes, 
conveying a brief biographical summary, without anything of 
critical disquisition. 

Of the general plan and execution of the work w r e have already 
expressed the fullest approbation. We know no one in America 
who could, or who would, have performed the task here under- 
taken, at once so well in accordance with the judgment of the 
critical, and so much to the satisfaction of the public. The 
labors, the embarrassments, the great difficulties of the achieve- 
ment are not easily estimated by those before the scenes. 

In saying that, individually, we disagree with many of the 
opinions expressed by Mr. Griswold, is merely suggesting what, 
in itself, would have been obvious without the suggestion. It 
rarely happens that any two persons thoroughly agree upon any 
one point. It would be mere madness to imagine that any two 
could coincide in every point of a case where exists a multiplicity 
of opinions upon a multiplicity of points. There is no one 
who, reading the volume before us, will not in a thousand in- 
stances, be tempted to throw it aside, because its prejudices and 
partialities are, in a thousand instances, altogether at war with 
his own. But when so tempted, he should bear in mind, that 
had the work been that of Aristarchus himself, the discrepancies 
of opinion would still have startled him and vexed him as now. 

We disagree then, with Mr. Griswold in many of his critical 



MR. GRISWOLD AND THE POETS. 289 

estimates ; although in general, we are proud to find his de- 
cisions our own. He has omitted from the body of his book, 
some one or two whom we should have been tempted to 
introduce. On the other hand, he has scarcely made us amends 
by introducing some one or two dozen whom we should have 
treated with contempt. We might complain too of a prepos- 
session, evidently unperceived by himself, for the writers of New 
England. We might hint also, that in two or three cases, he has 
rendered himself liable to the charge of personal partiality ; it is 
often so very difficult a thing to keep separate in the mind's 
eye, our conceptions of the poetry of a friend, from our impres- 
sions of his good fellowship and our recollections of the flavor 
of his wine. 

But having said thus much in the way of fault-finding, we 
have said all. The book should be regarded as the most impor- 
tant addition which our literature has for many years received. 
It fills a void which should have been long ago supplied. It 
is written with judgment, with dignity and candor. Steering 
with a dexterity not to be sufficiently admired, between the 
Scylla of Prejudice on the one hand, and the Chary bdis of 
Conscience on the other, Mr. Griswold in the " Poets and Poetry 
of America," has entitled himself to the thanks of his country- 
men, while showing himself a man of taste, talent, and tact. 



The Female Poets of America* is a large volume, to match 
"The Poets and Poetry of America," "The Prose Authors of 
America," and "The Poets and Poetry of England," — all of 
which have been eminently and justly successful. These works 
have indisputable claims upon public attention as critical sum- 
maries, at least, of literary merit and demerit. Their great and 
most obvious value, as affording data or material for criticism — 
as mere collections of the best specimens in each department and 
as records of fact, in relation not more to books than to their 
authors — has in some measure overshadowed the more important 
merit of the series : for these works have often, and in fact very 

* The Female Poets of America. By Rufus Wilmot Griswold. Phila- 
delphia : Oarey &, Hart. 
Vol. III.— 13. 



290 MR. GRISWOLD AND THE POETS. 

generally, the positive merits of discriminative criticism, and of 
honesty — always the more negative merit of strong common- 
sense. The best of the series is, beyond all question, "The Prose 
Authors of America." This is a book of which any critic in the 
country might well have been proud, without reference to the 
mere industry and research manifested in its compilation. These 
are truly remarkable ; but the vigor of comment and force of 
style are not less so ; while more independence and self-reliance 
are manifested than in any other of the series. There is not a 
weak paper in the book ; and some of the articles are able in all 
respects. The truth is that Mr. Griswold's intellect is more at 
home in Prose than Poetry. He is a better judge of fact than 
of fancy ; not that he has not shown himself quite competent to 
the task undertaken in " The Poets and Poetry of America," or 
of England, or in the work now especially before us. In this 
latter, he has done no less credit to himself than to the numerous 
lady-poets whom he discusses — and many of whom he now first 
introduces to the public. We are glad, for Mr. Griswold's sake, 
as well as for the interests of our literature generally, to perceive 
that he has been at the pains of doing what Northern critics seem 
to be at great pains never to do — that is to say, he has been at 
the trouble of doing justice, in great measure, to several poetesses 
who have not had the good fortune to be born in the North. The 
notices of the Misses Carey, of the Misses Fuller, of the sisters 
Mrs. Warfield and Mrs. Lee, of Mrs. Nichols, of Miss Welby, 
and of Miss Susan Archer Talley, reflect credit upon Mr. Gris- 
wold, and show him to be a man not more of taste than — shall 
we say it ? — of courage. Let our readers be assured that, (as 
matters are managed among the four or five different cliques who 
control our whole literature in controlling the larger portion of 
our critical journals,) it requires no small amount of courage, in 
an author whose subsistence lies in his pen, to hint, even, that 
anything good, in a literary way, can, by any possibility, exist 
out of the limits of a certain narrow territory. We repeat that 
Mr. Griswold deserves our thanks, under such circumstances, for 
the cordiality with which he has recognised the poetical claims of 
the ladies mentioned above. He has not, however, done one or 
two of them that full justice which, ere long, the public will 



MR. GRISWOLD AND THE POETS. 291 

take upon itself the task of rendering them. We allude espe- 
cially to the case of Miss Talley. Mr. Griswold praises her 
highly ; and we would admit that it would be expecting of him 
too much, just at present, to hope for his avowing, of Miss Tal- 
ley, what we think of her, and what one of our best known critics 
has distinctly avowed — that she ranks already with the best of 
American poetesses, and in time will surpass them all — that her 
demerits are those of inexperience and excessive sensibility, (be- 
traying her, unconsciously, into imitation,) while her merits are 
those of unmistakeable genius. We are proud to be able to say, 
moreover, in respect to another of the ladies referred to above, 
that one of her poems is decidedly the noblest poem in the collec- 
tion — although the most distinguished poetesses in the land have 
here included their most praiseworthy compositions. Our allu- 
sion is to Miss Alice Carey's " Pictures of Memory." Let our 
readers see it and judge for themselves. We speak deliberately : 
— in all the higher elements of poetry — in true imagination — in 
the power of exciting the only real poetical effect — elevation of 
the soul, in contradistinction from mere excitement of the intel- 
lect or heart — the poem in question is the noblest in the book. 

" The Female Poets of America " includes ninety-five names — 
commencing with Ann Bradstreet, the contemporary of the once 
world-renowned Du Bartas — him of the "nonsense- verses" — 
the poet who was in the habit of styling the sun the " Grand Duke 
of Candles " — and ending with " Helen Irving " — a nom de plume 
of Miss Anna H. Phillips. Mr. Griswold gives most space to Mrs. 
Maria Brooks, {Maria del Occidente,) not, we hope and believe, 
merely because Southey has happened to commend her. The 
claims of this lady we have not yet examined so thoroughly as 
we could wish, and we will speak more fully of her hereafter, 
perhaps. In point of actual merit — that is to say of actual ac- 
complishment, without reference to mere indications of the ability 
to accomplish — we would rank the first dozen or so in this order 
— (leaving out Mrs. Brooks for the present.) Mrs. Osgood — very 
decidedly first — then Mrs. Welby, Miss Carey, (or the Misses 
Carey,) Miss Talley, Mrs. Whitman, Miss Lynch, Miss Frances 
Fuller, Miss Lucy Hooper, Mrs. Oakes Smith, Mrs. Ellet, Mrs. 
Hewitt, Miss Clarke, Mrs. Lewis, Mrs. Nichols, Mrs. Warfield, 



292 MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 

(with her sister, Mrs. Lee,) Mrs. Eames, and Mrs. Sigourney. If 
Miss Lynch had as much imagination as energy of expression 
and artistic power, we would place her next to Mrs. Osgood. The 
next skilful merely, of those just mentioned, are Mrs. Osgood, 
Miss Lynch, and Mrs. Sigourney. The most imaginative are Miss 
Carey, Mrs. Osgood, Miss Talley, and Miss Fuller. The most ac- 
complished are Mrs. Ellet, Mrs. Eames, Mrs. Lewis, Mrs. Whit- 
man, and Mrs. Oakes Smith. The most popular are Mrs. Osgood, 
Mrs. Oakes Smith, and Miss Hooper. 



MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 

A DISCUSSION WITH "OUTIS." 

For the "Evening Mirror" of January 14, (1846), before my 
editorial connexion with the " Broadway Journal," I furnished a 
brief criticism on Professor Longfellow's " Waif." In the course 
of my observations, I collated a poem called " The Death-Bed," 
and written by Hood, with one by Mr. Aldrich, entitled " A 
Death-Bed." The criticism ended thus : 

We conclude our notes on the " Waif/' with the observation that, although 
full of beauties, it is infected with a moral taint — or is this a mere freak of 
our own fancy ? We shall be pleased if it be so ; — but there does appear, in 
this little volume, a very careful avoidance of all American poets who may 
be supposed especially to interfere with the claims of Mr. Longfellow. These 
men Mr. Longfellow can continuously imitate (is that the word ?) and yet 
never even incidentally commend. 

Much discussion ensued. A friend of Mr. Longfellow's penned 
a defence, which had at least the merit of being thoroughly im- 
partial ; for it defended Mr. L., not only from the one-tenth of 
very moderate disapproval in which I had indulged, but from the 
nine-tenths of my enthusiastic admiration into the bargain. The 
fact is, if I was not convinced that in ninety-nine hundredths of 
all that I had written about Mr. Longfellow I was decidedly in 
the wrong, at least it was no fault of Mr. Longfellow's very lumi- 
nous friend. This well-intended defence was published in the 
" Mirror," with a few words of preface by Mr. Willis, and of post- 
script by myself. Still dissatisfied, Mr. L., through a second 



MR. LONQ fellow AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 293 

friend, addressed to Mr. Willis an expostulatory letter, of which 
the " Mirror" printed only the following portion : 

It has been asked, perhaps, why Lowell was neglected in this collection ? 
Might it not as well be asked why Bryant, Dana and Halleck were neglected ? 
The answer is obvious to any one who candidly considers the character of 
the collection. It professed to be, according to the Poem, from the humbler 
poets ; and it was intended to embrace pieces that were anonymous, or 
which were easily accessible to the general reader — the waifs and estrays of 
literature. To put anything of Lowell's, for example, into a collection of 
waifs would be a particular liberty with pieces winch are all collected and 
christened. 

Not yet content, or misunderstanding the tenor of some of the 
wittily-put comments which accompanied the quotation, the 
aggrieved poet, through one of the two friends as before, or per- 
haps through a third, finally prevailed on the good nature of Mr. 
Willis to publish an explicit declaration of his disagreement with 
" all the disparagement of Longfellow" which had appeared in 
the criticism in question. 

Now when we consider that many of the points of censure 
made by me in this critique were absolutely as plain as the nose 
upon Mr. Longfellow's face — that it was impossible to gainsay 
them — that we defied him and his coadjutors to say a syllable in 
reply to them — and that they held their tongues and not a sylla- 
ble said — when we consider all this, I say, then the satire of the 
"all" in Mr. Willis's manifesto becomes apparent at once. Mr. 
Longfellow did not see it ; and I presume his friends did not see 
it. I did. In my mind's eye it expanded itself thus ; — " My 
dear Sir, or Sirs, what will you have ? You are an insatiable set 
of cormorants, it is true ; but if you will only let me know what 
you desire, I will satisfy you, if I die for it. Be quick ! — merely 
say what it is you wish me to admit, and (for the sake of getting 
rid of you) I will admit it upon the spot. Come ! I will grant at 
once that Mr. Longfellow is Jupiter Tonans, and that his three 
friends are the Graces, or the Furies, whichever you please. As 
for a fault to be found with either of you, that is impossible, and 
I say so. I disagree with all — with every syllable of the dispar- 
agement that ever has been whispered against you up to this 
date, and (not to stand upon trifles) with all that ever shall be 
whispered against you henceforward, forever and forever. May 
I hope at length that these assurances will be sufficient 2" 



294 MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 

But if Mr. Willis really hoped anything of the kind he was mis- 
taken. 

In the meantime Mr. Briggs, in the " Broadway Journal" — 
did me the honor of taking me to task for what he supposed to 
be my insinuations against Mr. Aldrich. My reply (in the " Mir- 
ror") prefaced by a few words from Mr. Willis, ran as follows : 

Much interest has been given in our literary circles of late to the topic of 
plagiarism. About a month ago a very eminent critic connected with this 
paper, took occasion to point out a parallelism between certain lines of 
Thomas Hood, and certain others which appeared in the collection of Ameri- 
can poetry edited by Mr. Griswold. Transcribing the passages, he ventured 
the assertion that " somebody is a thief." The matter had been nearly for- 
gotten, if not altogether so, when a " good-natured friend" of the American 
author (whose name had by us never been mentioned) considered it advisa- 
ble to re-collate the passages, with the view of convincing the public (and 
himself ) that no plagiarism is chargeable to the party of whom he thinks it 
chivalrous to be the " good-natured friend." For our own part, should we 
ever be guilty of an indiscretion of this kind, we deprecate all aid from our 
" good-natured friends" — but in the mean time it is rendered necessary that 
once again we give publicity to the collation of poems in question. Mr. 
Hood's lines run thus : 

We watched her breathing through the night, 
Her breathing soft and low, 

As in her breast the wave of life 
Kept heaving to and fro. 

So silently we seemed to speak, 

So slowly moved about, 
As we had lent her half our powers 

To eke her being out. 

Our very hope belied our fears ; 

Our fears our hope belied ; 
We thought her dying when she slept, 

And sleeping Avken she died. 

But when the morn came dim and sad, 

And chill with early showers, 
Her quiet eyelids closed ; — she had 
Another morn than ours. 

Mr. Aldrich 's thus : — 

Her sufferings ended with the day, 

Yet lived she at its close, 
And breathed the long, long night away 
In statue- like repose ; 

But when the sun in all its state 

Illumed the eastern skies, 
She passed through Glory's morning gate, 

And walked in paradise. 



MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARIST^. 295 



And here, to be sure, we might well leave a decision in the case tcl oe 
verdict of common sense. But since the " Broadway Journal" insists upon 
the " no resemblance," we are constrained to point out especially where our 
supposed similarity lies. In the first place, then, the subject in both pieces 
is death. In the second, it is the death of a woman. In the third, it is the 
death of a woman tranquilly dying. In the fourth, it is the death of a 
woman who lies tranquilly throughout the night. In the fifth, it is the death 
of a woman whose " breathing soft and low is watched through the night," in 
the one instance, and who " breathed the long long night away in statue-like 
repose" in the other. In the sixth place, in both poems this woman dies just 
at daybreak. In the seventh place, dying just at daybreak, this woman, in 
both cases, steps directly into Paradise. In the eighth place, all these iden- 
tities of circumstance are related in identical rhythms. In the ninth place, 
these identical rhythms are arranged in identical metres ; and, in the tenth 
place, these identical rhythms and metres are constructed into identical 
stanzas. 

At this point the matter rested for a fortnight, when a fourth 
friend of Mr. Longfellow took up the cudgels for him and Mr. 
Aldrich conjointly, in another communication to the " Mirror.'* 
I copy it iu full. 

Plagiarism. — Bear Willis — Fair play is a jewel, and I hope you will let 
us have it. I have been much amused, by some of the efforts of your critical 
friend, to convict Longfellow of imitation, and Aldrich and others, of pla- 
giarism. What is plagiarism ? And what constitutes a good ground for 
the charge ? Did no two men ever think alike without stealing one from 
the other ? or, thinking alike, did no two men ever use the same, or similar 
words, to convey the thoughts, and that, without any communication with 
each other ? To deny it would be absurd. It is a thing of every day oc- 
currence. Some years ago, a letter was written from some part of New 
England, describing one of those scenes, not very common during what is 
called " the January thaw," when the snow, mingled with rain, and freezing 
as it falls, forms a perfect covering of ice upon every object. The storm 
clears away suddenly, and the moon comes up. The letter proceeds — " evert/ 
tree and shrub, as far as the eye can reach, of pure transparent glass — a per- 
fect garden of moving, waving, breathing crystals Every tree is a 

diamond chandelier, with a whole constellation of stars clustering to every 
socket," &c. This letter was laid away where such things usually are, in a 
private drawer, and did not see the light for many years. But the very 
next autumn brought out, among the splendid annuals got up in the country, 
a beautiful poem from Whittier, describing the same, or rather a similar 
scene, in which is this line : 

The trees, like crystal chandeliers, 
was put in italics by every reviewer in the land, for the exceeding beauty 
of the imagery. Now the letter was written, probably, about the same time 
with the poem, though the poem was not published till nearly a year after. 
The writers were not, and never have been, acquainted with each other, and 
neither could possibly have seen the work of the other before writing. Now, 
was there any plagiarism here ? Yet there are plenty of " identities" The 



296 y& LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 



^ .or of the letter, when urged, some years after, to have it published, 
consented very reluctantly, through fear that he should be charged with 
theft ; and, very probably, the charge has been made, though I have never 
Been it. May not this often occur ? What is more natural ? Images are 
not created, but suggested. And why not the same images, when the cir- 
cumstances are precisely the same, to different minds ? Perhaps your critic 
will reply, that the case is different after one of the compositions is published. 
How so ? Does he or you, or anybody read everything that is published ? I 
am a great admirer, and a general reader of poetry. But, by what accident 
I do not know, I had never seen the beautiful lines of Hood, till your critical 
friend brought them to my notice in the Mirror. It is certainly possible 
that Aldrich had not seen them several years ago — and more than probable 
that Hood had not seen Aldrich's. Yet your friend affects great sympathy 
for both, in view of their better compunctions of conscience, for their literary 
piracies. 

But, after all, wherein does the real resemblance between these two com- 
positions consist ? Mr. , I had almost named him, finds nearly a dozen 

points of resemblance. But when he includes rhythm, metre and stanza 
among the dozen, he only shows a bitter resolution to make out a case, and 
not a disposition to do impartial justice. Surely the critic himself who is 
one of our finest poets, does not mean to deny that these mere externals are 
the common property of all bards. He does not feel it necessary to strike 
out a new stanza, or to invent new feet and measures, whenever he would 
clothe his " breathing thoughts in words that burn." Again, it is not im- 
probable that, within the period of time since these two writers, Hood and 
Aldrich, came on the stage, ten thousand females have died, and died tran- 
quilly, and died just at daybreak, and that after passing a tranquil night, 
and, so dying, were supposed by their friends to have passed at once to a 
better world, a morning in heaven. The poets are both describing an actual, 
and not an imaginary occurrence. And here — including those before men- 
tioned, which are common property — are nine of the critic's identities, which 
go to make up the evidence of plagiarism. The last six, it requires no 
stretch of the imagination to suppose, they might each have seen and noticed 
separately. The most of them, one other poet at least, has noticed, many 
years ago, in a beautiful poem on these words of the angel to the wrestling 
Jacob — " Let me go, for the day breaketh." Wonder if Hood ever saw that ? 
The few remaining "identities" are, to my mind, sufficiently disposed of by 
what I have already said. I confess I was not able, until the appearance of 
the critic's second paper, in which he brought them out specially, " marked, 
numbered, and labelled," to perceive the resemblance on which the grave 
charge of literary piracy, and moral dishonesty of the meanest kind was 
based. In view of all the glaring improbabilities of such a case, a critic 
should be very slow to make such a charge. I say glaring improbabilities, 
for it seems to me that no circumstantial evidence could be sufficient to se- 
cure a verdict of theft in such a case. Look at it. A man, who aspires to 
fame, who seeks the esteem and praise of the world, and lives upon his repu- 
tation, as his vital element, attempts to win his object — how ? By stealing, 
in open day, the finest passages, the most beautiful thoughts, (no others are 
worth stealing,) and the rarest images of another, and claiming them as his 
own ; and that too, when he knows that every competitor for fame, and 
every critical tribunal in the world, as well as the real owner, will be ready 
to identify the borrowed plumes in a moment, and cry him down as a thief. 
A madman, an idiot, if he were capable of such an achievement, might do 
it, but no other. A rogue may steal what he can conceal in his pocket, or 



MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 297 

his chest — but one must be utterly non compos, to steal a splendid shawl, or 
a magnificent plume, "which had been admired by thousands for its singular 
beauty, for the purpose of sporting it in Broadway. In nine hundred and 
ninety -nine cases of a thousand, such charges are absurd, and indicate rather 
the carping littleness of the critic, than the delinquency of his victim. 

Pray did you ever think the worse of Dana because your friend, John 
Neal, charged him with pirating upon Paul Allen, and Bryant too, in his 
poem of " The Dying Raven ?*' or of yourself, because the same friend thought 
he had detected you in the very act of stealing from Pinckney, and Miss 
Francis, now Mrs. Child ? Surely not. Everybody knows that John Neal 
wishes to be supposed to have read everything that ever was written, and 
never have forgotten anything. He delights, therefore, in showing up such 
resemblances. 

And now — for the matter of Longfellow's imitations— In what do they 
consist ? The critic is not very specific in this charge. Of what kind are 
they ? Are they imitations of thought ? Why not call them plagiarisms 
then, and show them up ? Or are they only verbal imitations of style ? Per- 
haps this is one of them, in his poem on the " Sea Weed." 

drifting, drifting, drifting 

On the shifting 

Currents of the restless main. 

resembling, in form and collocation only, a line in a beautiful and very power- 
ful poem of Mr. Edgar A. Poe. (Write it rather Edgar, a Poet, and then it 
is right to a T.) I have not the poem before me, and have forgotten its title. 
But he is describing a magnificent intellect in ruins, if I remember rightly — 
and, speaking of the eloquence of its better days, represents it as 

flowing, flowing, flowing 

Like a river. 

Is this what the critic means ? Is it such imitations as this that he alludes 
to ? If not, I am at fault, either in my reading of Longfellow, or in my gene- 
ral familiarity with the American Poets. If this be the kind of imitation 
referred to, permit me to say, the charge is too paltry for any man, who valued 
his reputation either as a gentleman or a scholar, to make. Who, for exam- 
ple, would wish to be guilty of the littleness of detracting from the uncom- 
mon merit of that remarkable poem of this same Mr. Poe's, recently published 
in the Mirror, from the American Review, entitled " The Raven," by charging 
him with the paltriness of imitation? And yet, some snarling critic, who 
might envy the reputation he had not the genius to secure for himself, might 
refer to the frequent, very forcible, but rather quaint repetition, in the last tAvo 
lines of many of the stanzas, as a palpable imitation of the manner of Cole- 
ridge, in several stanzas of the Ancient Mariner. Let me put them together. 
Mr. Poe says — 

Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore, 
Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore. 

And again — 

It shall clasp a sainted maiden, whom the angels name Lenore— 
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels name Lenore. 

Mr. Coleridge says, (running two lines into one :) 

For all averred I had killed the bird, that made the breeze to hlow, 

" Ah, wretch !" said they, " the bird to slay, and made the breeze to blow." 

And again — 

They all averred I had killed the bird, that brought the fog and mist. 
" 'Twas right," said they, ''such birds to slay, that bring the fog and mist." 
13* 



298 MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 

I have before me an anonymous poem, which I first saw some five years 
ago, entitled " The Bird of the Dream." I should like to transcribe the whole 
— but it is too long. The author was awaked from sleep by the song of a 
beautiful bird, sitting on the sill of his window — the sweet notes had mingled 
with his dreams, and brought to his remembrance, the sweeter voice of his 
lost " Clare." He says — 

And thou wert in my dream — a spirit thou didst seem — 

The spirit of a friend long since departed ; 
Oh ! she was fair and bright, but she left me one dark night — 

She left me all alone, and broken-hearted 

My dream went on, and thou went a warbling too, 

Mingling the harmonies of earth and heaven ; 
Till away — away — away — beyond the realms of day — 

My angel Clare to my embrace was given 



Sweet bird from realms of light, oh ! come again to-night, 

Come to my window — perch upon my chair — 
Come give me back again that deep impassioned strain 

That tells me thou hast seen and loved my Clark. 

Now I shall not charge Mr. Poe with plagiarism — for, as I have said, such 
charges are perfectly absurd. Ten to one, he never saw this before. But let 
us look at the " identities" that may be made out between this and " The 
Raven." First, in each case, the poet is a broken-hearted lover. Second, 
that lover longs for some hereafter communion with the departed. Third, 
there is a bird. Fourth, the bird is at the poet's window. Fifth, the bird 
being at the poet's window, makes a noise. Sixth, making a noise, attracts 
the attention of the poet ; who, Seventh, was half asleep, dosing, dreaming. 
Eighth, the poet invites the bird to come in. Ninth, a confabulation ensues. 
Tenth, the bird is supposed to be a visiter from the land of spirits. Eleventh, 
allusion is made to the departed. Twelfth, intimation is given that the bird 
knew something of the departed. Thirteenth, that he knew her worth and 
loveliness. Fourteenth, the bird seems willing to linger with the poet. 
Fifteenth, there is a repetition, in the second and fourth lines, of a part, and 
that the emphatic part, of the first and third. Here is a round baker's- 
dozen (and one to spare) of identities, to offset the dozen found between 
Aldrich and Hood, and that too, without a word of rhythm, metre or stanza, 
which should never form a part of such a comparison. Moreover, this 
same poem contains an example of that kind of repetition, which I have sup- 
posed the critic meant to charge upon Longfellow as one of his imitations — 
Away — away — away, &c. 

I might pursue it further. But I will not. Such criticisms only make 
the author of them contemptible, without soihng a plume in the cap of his 
victim. I have selected this poem of Mr. Poe's, for illustrating my remarks, 
because it is recent, and must be familiar to all the lovers of true poetry here- 
abouts. It is remarkable for its power, beauty, and originality, (out upon the 
automaton owl that has presumed to croak out a miserable parody — I com- 
mend him to the tender mercies of Haynes Bayley,*) and shows more forci- 
bly than any winch I can think of, the absurdity and shallowness of this kind 
of criticism. One word more, — though acquainted with Mr. Longfellow, I 
have never seen Mr. Aldrich, nor do I even know in what part of the coun- 
try he resides ; and I have no acquaintance with Mr. Poe. I have written 
what I have written from no personal motives, but simply because, from my 
earliest reading of reviews and critical notices, I have been disgusted with 

* I would be a Parody, written by a ninny, 
Not worth a penny, and sold for a guinea, &c. 



MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 299 

this wholesale mangling of victims without rhyme or reason. I scarcely re- 
member an instance where the resemblances detected were not exceedingly 
far-fetched and shadowy, and only perceptible to a mind pre-disposed to sus- 
picion, and accustomed to splitting hairs. Outis. 

What I admire in this letter is the gentlemanly grace of its 
manner, and the chivalry which has prompted its composition. 
What I do not admire is all the rest. In especial, I do not ad- 
mire the desperation of the effort to make out a case. No gen- 
tleman should degrade himself, on any grounds, to the paltriness 
of ex-par te argument ; and I shall not insult Outis at the outset, 
by assuming for a moment that he (Outis) is weak enough, to 
suppose me (Poe) silly enough, to look upon all this abominable 
rigmarole as anything better than a very respectable specimen of 
special pleading. 

As a general rule in a case of this kind, I should wish to begin 
with the beginning, but as I have been unable, in running my eye 
over Outis's remarks, to discover that they have any beginning at 
all, I shall be pardoned for touching them in the order which 
suits me best. Outis need not have put himself to the trouble of 
informing his readers that he has " some acquaintance with Mr. 
Longfellow." It was needless also to mention that he did not 
know me. I thank him for his many flatteries — but of their in- 
consistency I complain. To speak of me in one breath as a poet, 
and in the next to insinuate charges of " carping littleness," is 
simply to put forth a flat paradox. WTien a plagiarism is com- 
mitted and detected, the word " littleness," and other similar 
words, are immediately brought into play. To the words them- 
selves I have no objection whatever; but their application might 
occasionally be improved. 

Is it altogether impossible that a critic be instigated to the ex- 
posure of a plagiarism, or still better, of plagiarism generally 
wherever he meets it, by a strictly honorable and even charitable 
motive ? Let us see. A theft of this kind is committed — for the 
present we will admit the possibility that a theft of this character 
can be committed. The chances of course are, that an establish- 
ed author steals from an unknown one, rather than the converse ; 
for in proportion to the circulation of the original, is the risk of the 
plagiarism's detection. The person about to commit the theft, 
hopes for impunity altogether on the ground of the reconditeness 



300 MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 

of the source from which he thieves. But this obvious considera- 
tion is rarely borne in mind. We read a certain passage in a cer- 
tain book. We meet a passage nearly similar, in another book. 
The first book is not at hand, and we cannot compare dates. We 
decide by what we fancy the probabilities of the case. The one 
author is a distinguished man — our sympathies are always in favor 
of distinction. " It is not likely," we say in our hearts, " that so 
distinguished a personage as A. would be guilty of plagiarism 
from this B. of whom nobody in the world has ever heard." We 
give judgment, therefore, at once against B. of whom nobody in 
the world has ever heard ; and it is for the very reason that nobody 
in the world has ever heard of him, that, in ninety-nine cases out 
of the hundred, the judgment so precipitously given is erroneous. 
Now then the plagiarist has not merely committed a wrong in it- 
self — a wrong whose incomparable meanness would deserve expo- 
sure on absolute grounds — but he, the guilty, the successful, the 
eminent, has fastened the degradation of his crime — the retribu- 
tion which should have overtaken it in his own person — upon 
the guiltless, the toiling, the unfriended straggler up the moun- 
tainous path of Fame. Is not sympathy for the plagiarist, then, 
about as sagacious and about as generous as would be sympathy 
for the murderer whose exultant escape from the noose of the 
hangman should be the cause of an innocent man's being hung ? 
And because I, for one, should wish to throttle the guilty with the 
view of letting the innocent go, could it be considered proper on 
the part of any " acquaintance of Mr. Longfellow's" who came to 
witness the execution — could it be thought, I say, either chival- 
rous or decorous on the part of this " acquaintance" to get up 
against me a charge of " carping littleness," while we stood ami- 
cably together at the foot of the gallows ? 

In all this I have taken it for granted that such a sin as plagiar- 
ism exists. We are informed by Otitis, however, that it does not, 
" I shall not charge Mr. Poe with plagiarism," he says, " for, as I 
have said, such charges are perfectly absurd." An assertion of this 
kind is certainly funny, (I am aware of no other epithet which 
precisely applies to it;) and I have much curiosity to know if Outis 
is prepared to swear to its truth — holding right aloft his hand, 
of course, and kissing the back of D'Israeli's " Curiosities," or the 



MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 301 

" Melanges" of Suard and Andre. But if the assertion is funny 
(and it is) it is by no means an original thing. It is precisely, 
in fact, what all the plagiarists and all the " acquaintances" of the 
plagiarists since the flood, have maintained with, a very praise- 
worthy resolution. The attempt to prove, however, by reasoning 
a priori, that plagiarism cannot exist, is too good an idea on the 
part of Outis not to be a plagiarism in itself. Are we mistaken? 
— or have we seen the following words before in Joseph Miller, 
where that ingenious gentleman is bent upon demonstrating that a 
leg of mutton is and ought to be a turnip ? 

A man who aspires to fame, etc., attempts to win his object — how ? By 
stealing, in open day, the finest passages, the most beautiful thoughts, (no 
others are worth stealing,) and claiming them as his own ; and that too when 
he knows that every competitor, etc., will be ready to cry him down as a 
thief. 

Is it possible? — is it conceivable that Outis does not here see 
the begging of the whole question ? Why, of course, if the theft 
had to be committed "in open day" \t would not be committed; 
and if the thief " knew" that every one would cry him down, 
he would be too excessive a fool to make even a decent thief if he 
indulged his thieving propensities in any respect. But he thieves 
at night — in the dark — and not in the open day, (if he suspects it,) 
and he does not know that he will be detected at all. Of the class 
of wilful plagiarists nine out of ten are authors of established repu- 
tation, who plunder recondite, neglected, or forgotten books. 

" I shall not accuse Mr. Poe of plagiarism," says Outis, " for, 
as I have observed before, such charges are perfectly absurd" — 
and Outis is certainly right in dwelling on the point that he has 
observed this thing before. It is the one original point of his 
essay — for I really believe that no one else was ever silly enough 
to " observe it before." 

Here is a gentleman who writes in certain respects as a gentle- 
man should, and who yet has the effrontery to base a defence of a 
friend from the charge of plagiarism, on the broad ground that no 
such thing as plagiarism ever existed. I confess that to an asser- 
tion of this nature there is no little difficulty in getting up a reply. 
What in the world can a man say in a case of this kind ? — he 
cannot of course give utterance to the first epithets that spring to 
his lips — and yet what else shall he utter that shall not have an 



302 MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 

air of direct insult to the common sense of mankind ? What 
could any judge on any bench in the country do but laugh or 
swear at the attorney who should begin his defence of a petty- 
larceny client with an oration demonstrating a priori that no such 
thing as petty larceny ever had been, or in the nature of things, 
ever could be committed ? And yet the attorney might make as 
sensible a speech as Outis — even a more sensible one — anything 
but a less sensible one. Indeed, mutato nomine, he might employ 
Outis's identical words. He might say — " In view, gentlemen of 
the jury, of all the glaring improbabilities of such a case, a prose- 
cuting attorney should be very slow to make such a charge. I 
say glaring improbabilities, for it seems to me that no circumstan- 
tial evidence could be sufficient to secure a verdict of theft in such 
a case. Look at it. [Here the judge would look at the maker of 
the speech.] Look at it. A man who aspires to (the) fame (of 
being a beau) — who seeks the esteem and praise of all the world 
(of dandies) and lives upon his reputation (for broadcloth) as his 
vital element, attempts to win his object — how ? By stealing in 
open day the finest waistcoats, the most beautiful dress- coats (no 
others are worth stealing) and the rarest pantaloons of another, 
and claiming them as his own ; and that too when he knows that 
every competitor for (the) fame (of Brummelism) and every fash- 
ion-plate Magazine in the world, as well as the real owner, will 
be ready to identify the borrowed plumes in a moment, and cry 
him down as a thief. A madman, an idiot, if he were capable of 
such an achievement, might do it, gentlemen of the jury, but no 
other." 

Now, of course, no judge in the world whose sense of duty was 
not overruled by a stronger sense of the facetious, would permit 
the attorney to proceed with any such speech. It would never 
do to have the time of the court occupied by this gentleman's 
well-meant endeavor to show a priori, the impossibility of that ever 
happening which the clerk of this same court could show a poste- 
riori had been happening by wholesale ever since there had been 
such a thing as a foreign count. And yet the speech of the attor- 
ney was really a very excellent speech, when we compare it with 
that of Outis. For the "glaring improbability" of the plagiar- 
ism, is a mere nothing by the side of the " glaring improbability" 



MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 303 

of the theft of the sky-blue dress-coat, and the yellow plaid pan- 
taloons : — we may take it for granted, of course, that the thief 
was one of the upper ten thousand of thieves, and would not 
have put himself to the trouble of appropriating any garments 
that were not of indisputable bon ton, and patronised even by 
Professor Longfellow himself. The improbability of the literary 
theft, I say, is really a mere trifle in comparison with the broad- 
cloth larceny. For the plagiarist is either a man of no note or a 
man of note. In the first case, he is usually an ignoramus, and 
getting possession of a rather rare book, plunders it without scru- 
ple, on the ground that nobody has ever seen a copy of it except 
himself. In the second case (which is a more general one by far) 
he pilfers from some poverty-stricken, and therefore neglected man 
of genius, on the reasonable supposition that this neglected man 
of genius will very soon cut his throat, or die of starvation, (the 
sooner the better, no doubt,) and that in the meantime he will 
be too busy in keeping the wolf from the door to look after the 
purloiners of his property — and too poor, and too cowed, and for 
these reasons too contemptible, under any circumstances, to dare 
accuse of so base a thing as theft, the wealthy and triumphant 
gentleman of elegant leisure who has only done the vagabond 
too much honor in knocking him down and robbing him upon the 
highway. 

The plagiarist, then, in either case, has very reasonable ground 
for expecting impunity, and at all events it is because he thinks 
so, that he perpetrates the plagiarism — but how is it with the 
count who steps into the shop of the tailor, and slips under his 
cloak the sky-blue dress coat, and the yellow plaid pantaloons ? 
He, the count, would be a greater fool in these matters than a 
count ever was, if he did not perceive at once, that the chances 
were about nine hundred and ninety-nine to one, that he would 
be caught the next morning before twelve o'clock, in the very first 
bloom and blush of his promenade down Broadway, by some one 
of those officious individuals who are continually on the qui vive 
to catch the counts and take away from them their sky-blue coats 
and yellow plaid pantaloons. Yes, undoubtedly ; the count is 
very well aware of all this ; but he takes into consideration, that 
although the nine hundred and ninety-nine chances are certainly 



304 MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 

against him, the one is just as certainly in his favor — that luck is 
everything — that life is short — that the weather is fine — and that 
if he can only manage to get safely through his promenade down 
Broadway in the sky-blue dress coat and the yellow plaid panta- 
loons, he will enjoy the high honor, for once in his life, at least, 
of being mistaken by fifteen ladies out of twenty, either for Pro- 
fessor Longfellow, or Phoebus Apollo. And this consideration is 
enough — the half of it would have been more than enough to 
satisfy the count that, in putting the garments under his cloak, 
he is doing a very sagacious and very commendable thing. He 
steals them, then, at once, and without scruple, and, when he is 
caught arrayed in them the next morning, he is, of course, highly 
amused to hear his counsel make an oration in court about the 
" glaring improbability" of his having stolen them when he stole 
them — by way of showing the abstract impossibility of their ever 
having been stolen at all. 

" What is plagiarism ?" demands Outis at the outset, avec Pair 
d'un Romain qui sauve sa patrie — "What is plagiarism, and what 
constitutes a good ground for the charge ?" Of course all men 
anticipate something unusually happy in the way of reply to 
queries so cavernously propounded ; but if so, then all men have 
forgotten, or no man has ever known that Outis is a Yankee. He 
answers the two questions by two others — and perhaps this is 
quite as much as any one should expect him to do. " Did no two 
men," he says, " ever think alike without stealing one from the 
other ? — or thinking alike, did no two men ever use the same or 
similar w T ords to convey the thoughts, and that without any com- 
munication with each other ? — To deny it is absurd." Of course 
it is — very absurd ; and the only thing more absurd that I can 
call to mind at present, is the supposition that any person ever 
entertained an idea of denying it. But are we to understand the 
denying it, or the absurdity of denying it, or the absurdity of 
supposing that any person intended to deny it, as the true answer 
to the original queries. 

But let me aid Outis to a distinct conception of his own irrele- 
vance. I accuse his friend, specifically, of a plagiarism. This 
accusation Outis rebuts by asking me with a grave face — not 
whether the friend might not, in this individual case, and in the 



MR LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 305 

compass of eight short lines, have happened upon ten or twelve 
peculiar identities of thought and identities of expression with 
the author from whom I charge him with plagiarising — but sim- 
ply whether I do not admit the 'possibility that once in the course 
of eternity some two individuals might not happen upon a single 
identity of thought, and give it voice in a single identity of ex- 
pression. 

•Now, frankly, I admit the possibility in question, and would 
request my friends to get ready for me a strait-jacket if I did not. 
There can be no doubt in the world, for example, that Outis con- 
siders me a fool : — the thing is sufficiently plain : and this opinion 
on the part of Outis is what mankind have agreed to denominate 
an idea ; and this idea is also entertained by Mr. Aldrich, and by 
Mr. Longfellow — and by Mrs. Outis and her seven children — and by 
Mrs. Aldrich and hers — and by Mrs. Longfellow and hers — in- 
cluding the grand-children and great grand-children, if any, who 
will be instructed to transmit the idea in unadulterated purity 
down an infinite vista of generations yet to come. And of this idea 
thus extensively entertained, it would really be a very difficult thing 
to vary the expression in any material degree. A remarkable simi- 
larity would be brought about, indeed, by the desire of the parties 
in question to put the thought into as compendious a form as 
possible, by way of bringing it to a focus at once and having done 
with it upon the spot. 

Outis will perceive, therefore, that I have every desire in the 
world to afford him that " fair play'' which he considers " a jewel," 
since I admit not only the possibility of the class of coincidences 
for which he contends, but even the impossibility of there not ex- 
isting just as many of these coincidences as he may consider ne- 
cessary to make out his case. One of the species he details as 
follows, at some length. 

Some years ago, a letter was written from some part of New England, 
describing one of those scenes, not very common during what is called " the 
January thaw," when the snow, mingled with rain, and freezing as it falls, 
forms a perfect covering of ice upon every object. The storm clears away 
suddenly, and the moon comes up. The letter proceeds — " every tree and 
shrub, as far as the eye can reach, of pure transparent glass — a perfect gar- 
den of moving, waving, breathing crystals Every tree is a diamond 

chandelier, with a whole constellation of stars clustering to every socket," &c. 
This letter was laid away where such things usually are, in a private drawer, 



306 MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 

and did not see the light for many years. But the very next autumn brought 
out, among the splendid annuals got up in the country, a beautiful poem 
from Whittier, describing the same, or rather a similar scene, in which the line 

The trees, like crystal chandeliers, 
was put in italics by every reviewer in the land, for the exceeding beauty of 
the imagery. Now the letter was written, probably, about the same time 
with the poem, though the poem was not published till nearly a year after. 
The writers were not, and never have been, acquainted with each other, and 
neither could possibly have seen the work of the other before writing. Now, 
was there any plagiarism here ?" 

After the fashion of Otitis himself I shall answer his query by 
another. What has the question whether the chandelier friend 
committed a plagiarism, to do with the question whether the 
death-bed friend committed a plagiarism, or whether it is possible 
or impossible that plagiarism, generally, can be committed ? But, 
merely for courtesy's sake, I step aside from the exact matter in 
hand. In the case mentioned I should consider material differ- 
ences in the terms of description as more remarkable than coinci- 
dences. Since the tree really looked like a chandelier, the true 
wonder would have been in likening it to anything else. Of 
course, nine common-place men out of ten would have maintained 
it to be a chandelier-looking tree. No poet of any pretention 
however, would have committed himself so far as to put such a 
similitude in print. The chandelier might have been poetically 
likened to the crystallized tree — but the converse is a platitude. 
The gorgeous unaltered handiwork of Nature is always degraded 
by comparison with the tawdry gew-gaws of Art — and perhaps 
the very uglist thing in the world is a chandelier. If " every re- 
viewer in the land put the passage into Italics on account of the 
exceeding beauty of the imagery," then every printer's devil in 
the land should have been flogged for not taking it out of Italics 
upon the spot, and putting it in the plainest Roman — which is too 
good for it by one half. 

I put no faith in the nil admirari, and am apt to be amazed at 
every second thing which I see. One of the most amazing things 
I have yet seen, is the complacency with which Outis throws to 
the right and left his anonymous assertions, taking it for granted 
that because he (Nobody) asserts them, I must believe them as a 
matter of course. However — he is quite in the right. I am per- 
fectly ready to admit anything that he pleases, and am prepared 



MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 307 

to put as implicit faith in his ipse dixit as the Bishop of Autun 
did in the Bible — on the ground that he knew nothing about it 
at all. We will understand it, then, not merely as an anonymous 
assertion but as an absolute fact, that the two chandelier authors 
" were not and never have been acquainted with each other, and 
that neither could have seen the work of the other before writing." 
We will agree to understand all this as indisputable truth, I 
say, through motives of the purest charity, for the purpose of as- 
sisting a friend out of trouble, and without reference to the consid- 
eration that no third person short of Signor Blitz or Professor 
Rogers could in any conceivable manner have satisfied himself of 
the truth of the twentieth part of it. Admitting this and every- 
thing else, to be as true as the Pentateuch, it follows that pla- 
giarism in the case in question was a thing that could not by any 
possibility be — and do I rightly comprehend Outis as demonstrat- 
ing the impossibility of plagiarism where it ^possible, by adducing 
instances of inevitable similarity under circumstances where it is 
not ? The fact is, that through want of space and time to follow 
Outis through the labyrinth of impertinences in which he is scramb- 
ling about, I am constrained much against my sense of decorum, 
to place him in the high-road of his argument, so that he may 
see where he is, and what he is doing, and what it is that he is en- 
deavoring to demonstrate. 

He wishes to show, then, that Mr. Longfellow is innocent of 
the imitation with which I have charged him, and that Mr. Aklrich 
is innocent of the plagiarism with which I have not charged 
him ; and this duplicate innocence is expected to be proved by 
showing the possibility that a certain, or that any uncertain series 
of coincidences may be the result of pure accident. Now of 
course I cannot be sure that Outis will regard my admission as a 
service or a disservice, but I admit the possibility at once ; and 
not only this, but I would admit it as a possibility were the coinci- 
dences a billion, and each of the most definitive peculiarity that 
human ingenuity could conceive. But in admitting this, I admit 
just nothing at all, so far as the advancement of Outis's proper 
argument is concerned. The affair is one of probabilities alto- 
gether, and can be satisfactorily settled only by reference to their 
Calculus. 



808 MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 

" Pray," inquires Outis of Mr. Willis, " did you ever think the 
worse of Dana because your friend John Neal charg'ed him with 
pirating upon Paul Allen, and Bryant, too, in his poem of The 
Dying Raven ?" I am sincerely disposed to give Outis his due, 
and will not pretend to deny his happy facility in asking irrele- 
vant questions. In the present case, we can only imagine Mr. 
Willis's reply : — " My dear sir," he might say, " I certainly do not 
think much the worse of Mr. Dana, because Mr. Neal charged 
him with the piracy, but be so kind as not to inquire what might 
have been my opinion had there been any substantiation of the 
charge." I quote Outis's inquiry, however, not so much to in- 
sist upon its singular luminousness, as to call attention to the ar- 
gument embodied in the capital letters of " The Dying Raven." 

Now, were I, in any spasm of perversity, to direct Outis's cat- 
echetical artillery against himself, and demand of him explicitly 
his reasons for causing those three words to be printed in capitals, 
what in the world would he do for a reply ? As a matter of 
course, for some moments, he would be profoundly embarrassed — 
but, being a true man, and a chivalrous one, as all defenders of 
Mr. Longfellow must be, he could not fail, in the end, to admit 
that they were so printed for the purpose of safely insinuating a 
charge which not even an Outis had the impudence openly to 
utter. Let us imagine his thoughts while carefully twice under- 
scoring the words. Is it impossible that they ran thus ? — " I am 
perfectly well aware, to be sure, that the only conceivable resem- 
blance between Mr. Bryant's poem and Mr. Poe's poem, lies in 
their common reference to a raven ; but then, what I am writing 
will be seen by some who have not read Mr. Bryant's poem, and 
by many who have never heard of Mr. Poe's, and among these 
classes I shall be able to do Mr. Poe a serious injustice and injury, 
by conveying the idea that there is really sufficient similarity to 
warrant that charge of plagiarism, which I, Outis, the ' acquaint- 
ance of Mr. Longfellow,' am too high-minded and too merciful to 
prefer." 

Now, I do not pretend to be positive that any such thoughts 
as these ever entered the brain of Outis. Nor will I venture to 
designate the whole insinuation as a specimen of " carping little- 
ness, too paltry for any man who values his reputation as a gen- 



MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 309 

tleman ;'' for, in the first place, the whole matter, as I have put 
it, is purely supposititious, and in the second, I should furnish 
ground for a new insinuation of the same character, inasmuch as 
I should be employing Outis's identical words. The fact is, Outis 
has happened upon the idea that the most direct method of re- 
butting one accusation, is to get up another. By showing that / 
have committed a sin, he proposes to show that Mr. Aldrich and 
Mr. Longfellow have not. Leaving the underscored Dying Ra- 
ven to argue its own case, he proceeds, therefore, as follows : — 

Who, for example, would wish to be guilty of the littleness of detracting 
from the uncommon merit of that remarkable poem of this same Mr. Poe's, 
recently published in the Mirror, from the American Review, entitled " The 
Raven," by charging him with the paltriness of imitation ? And yet, some 
snarling critic, who might envy the reputation he had not the genius to se- 
cure for himself, might refer to the frequent, very forcible, but rather quaint 
repetition, in the last two lines of many of the stanzas, as a palpable imita- 
tion of the manner of Coleridge, in several stanzas of the Ancient Mariner. 
Let me put them together. Mr. Poe says — 

Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore, 
Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore. 

And again — 

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore — 
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore. 

Mr. Coleridge says, (running two lines into one) : 

For all averred I had killed the bird that made the breeze to blow, 

" Ah, wretch !" said they, " the bird to slay, that made the breeze to blow. 

And again — 

They all averred I had killed the bird, that brought the fog and mist, 

" 'Twas right," said they, "such birds to slay, that bring the fog and mist." 

The " rather quaint " is ingenious. Fully one-third of whatever 
effect " The Raven " has, is wrought by the quaintness in ques- 
tion — a point elaborately introduced, to accomplish a well-consid- 
ered purpose. What idea would Outis entertain of me, were I 
to speak of his defence of his friends as very decent, very respect- 
able, but rather meritorious ? In the passages collated, there are 
two points upon which the " snarling critic " might base his in- 
sinuation — if ever so weak a " snarling critic " existed. Of these 
two points one is purely hypothetical — that is to say, it is disin- 
genuously manufactured by Mr. Longfellow's acquaintance to suit 
his own purposes — or perhaps the purposes of the imaginary 
snarling critic. The argument of the second point is demolished 
by my not only admitting it, but insisting upon it. Perhaps the 
least tedious mode of refuting Outis, is to acknowledge nine-tenths 
of everything he may think proper to say. 



310 MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 

But, in the present instance, what am I called upon to acknow- 
ledge ? I am charged with imitating the repetition of phrase in 
the two concluding lines of a stanza, and of imitating this from 
Coleridge. But why not extend the accusation, and insinuate 
that I imitate it from everybody else ? for certainly there is no 
poet living or dead who has not put in practice the identical ef- 
fect — the well-understood effect of the refrain. Is Outis's argu- 
ment to the end that / have no right to this thing for the reason 
that all the world has ? If this is not his argument, will he be 
kind enough to inform me (at his leisure) what it is ? Or is he 
prepared to confess himself so absurdly uninformed as not to 
know that whatever a poet claims on the score of original versifi- 
cation, is claimed not on account of any individual rhythmical or 
metrical effects, (for none are individually original,) but solely on 
account of the novelty of his combinations of old effects ? The 
hypothesis, or manufacture, consists in the alteration of Cole- 
ridge's metre, with the view of forcing it into a merely ocular 
similarity with my own, and thus of imposing upon some one or 
two grossly ignorant readers. I give the verses of Coleridge as 

they are : 

For all averred, I had killed the bird 

That made the breeze to blow, 
Ah, wretch, said they, the bird to slay, 
That made the breeze to blow. 

The verses beginning, " They all averred," etc., are arranged in 
the same manner. Now I have taken it for granted that it is 
Outis's design to impose the idea of similarity between my lines 
and those of Coleridge, upon some one or two grossly ignorant 
individuals : at the same time, whoever attempts such an imposi- 
tion is rendered liable at least to the suspicion of very gross igno- 
rance himself. The ignorance or the knavery are the two uncom- 
fortable horns of his dilemma. 

Let us see. Coleridge's lines are arranged in quatrains — mine 
in couplets. His first and third lines rhyme at the closes of the 
second and fourth feet — mine flow continuously, without rhyme. 
His metre, briefly defined, is alternately tetrameter acatalectic and 
trimeter acatalectic — mine is uniformly octameter catalectic. It 
might be expected, however, that at least the rhythm would prove 
to be identical — but not so. Coleridge's is iambic (varied in the 



MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 311 

third foot of the first line with an anapsest) — mine is the exact 
converse, trochaic. The fact is, that neither in rhythm, metre, 
stanza, or rhyme, is there even a single point of approximation 
throughout ; the only similarity being the wickedly or sillily 
manufactured one of Outis himself, appealing from the ears to 
the eyes of the most uncultivated classes of the rabble. The in- 
genuity and validity of the manufacture might be approached, 
although certainly not paralleled, by an attempt to show that 
blue and yellow pigments standing unmixed at separate ends of 
a studio, were equivalent to green. I say u not paralleled," for 
even the mixing of the pigments, in the case of Outis, would be 
very far, as I have shown, from producing the supposititious ef- 
fect. Coleridge's lines, written together, would result in rhymed 
iambic heptameter acatalectic, while mine are unrhymed trochaic 
octameter catalectic — differing in every conceivable circumstance. 
A closer parallel than the one I have imagined, would be the 
demonstration that two are equal to four, on the ground that, 
possessing two dollars, a man will have four when he gets an ad- 
ditional couple — for that the additional couple is someivhere, no 
one, after due consideration, will deny. 

If Outis will now take a seat upon one of the horns of his di- 
lemma, I will proceed to the third variation of the charges insin- 
uated through the medium of the " snarling critic," in the passage 
heretofore quoted.* 

The first point to be attended to is the " ten to one that I never 
saw it before." Ten to one that I never did — but Outis might 
have remembered that twenty to one I should like to see it. In 
accusing either Mr. Aldrich or Mr. Hood, I printed their poems 
together and in full. But an anonymous gentleman rebuts my 
accusation by telling me that there is a certain similarity between 
a poem of my own and an anonymous poem which he has before 
him, and which he would like to transcribe if it were not too 
long. He contents himself, therefore, with giving me, from this 
too long poem, three stanzas which are shown, by a series of in- 
tervening asterisks, to have been culled, to suit his own purposes, 
from different portions of the poem, but which (again to suit his 
own purposes) he places before the public in consecutive con- 
* " I have before me," to " part of such comparison," ante, p. 298. 



312 MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 

nexion ! The least that can be said of the whole statement is 
that it is deliciously frank — but, upon the whole, the poem will 
look quite as well before me, as before Outis, whose time is too 
much occupied to transcribe it. I, on the other hand, am entirely 
at leisure, and will transcribe and print the whole of it with the 
greatest pleasure in the world — provided always that it is not too 
long to refer to — too long to have its whereabouts pointed out — 
as I half suspect, from Outis's silence on the subject, that it is. 
One thing I will take it upon myself to say, in the spirit of pro- 
phecy : — whether the poem in question is or is not in existence 
(and we have only Nobody's word that it is,) the passages as 
quoted, are not in existence, except as quoted by Outis, who, in 
some particulars, I maintain, has falsified the text, for the purpose 
of forcing a similarity, as in the case of the verses of Coleridge. 
All this I assert in the spirit of prophecy, while we await the 
forthcoming of the poem. In the meantime, we will estimate 
the " identities " with reference to the " Raven " as collated with 
the passages culled by Outis — granting him everything he is 
weak enough to imagine I am in duty bound to grant — admitting 
that the poem as a whole exists — that the words and lines are in- 
genuously written — that the stanzas have the connexion and se- 
quence he gives them — and that although he has been already 
found guilty of chicanery in one instance, he is at least entirely 
innocent in this. 

He has established, he says, fifteen identities, " and that, too, 
without a word of rhythm, metre, or stanza, which should never 
form a part of such comparison" — by which, of course, we are 
to understand that with the rhythm, metre, and stanza (omitted 
only because they should never form a part of such comparison) 
he would have succeeded in establishing eighteen. Now I insist 
that rhythm, metre, and stanza, should form and must form a 
part of the comparison, and I will presently demonstrate what I 
say. I also insist, therefore, since he could find me guilty if he 
would upon these points, that guilty he must and shall find me 
upon the spot. He then, distinctly, has established eighteen 
identities — and I proceed to examine them one by one. 

" First," he says " in each case the poet is a broken-hearted 
lover." Not so : — my poet has no indication of a broken heart. 



MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 313 

On the contrary he lives triumphantly in the expectation of meet- 
ing his Lenore in Aidenn, and is so indignant with the raven for 
maintaining that the meeting will never take place, as to call him 
a liar, and order him out of the house. Not only is my lover not 
a broken-hearted one — but I have been at some pains to show 
that broken hearts and matters of that kind are improperly made 
the subject of poems. I refer to a chapter of the articles en- 
titled " Marginalia," (p. .) " Second" says Outis, " that lover 

longs for some hereafter communion with the bird." In my 
poem there is no expression of any such longing — the nearest 
approach to it is the triumphant consciousness which forms 
the thesis and staple of the whole. In Outis's poem the 
nearest approach to the "longing" is contained in the lover's 
request to the bird to repeat a strain that assures him 
( the lover,) that it (the bird,) has known the lost mistress. 
" Third — there is a bird," says Outis. So there is. Mine how- 
ever is a raven, and we may take it for granted that Outis's is either 
a nightingale or a cockatoo. " Fourth, the bird is at the poet's 
window." As regards my poem, true ; as regards Outis's, not : — 
the poet only requests the bird to come to the window. Fifth, 
the bird being at the poet's window, makes a noise." The fourth 
specification failing, the fifth, which depends upon it, as a matter 
of course fails too. " Sixth, making a noise attracts the attention 
of the poet." The fifth specification failing, the sixth, which de- 
pends upon it, fails, likewise, and as a matter of course, as before. 
" Seventh, [the poet] was half asleep, dozing, dreaming." False 
altogether : only my poet was " napping," and this in the com- 
mencement of the poem, which is occupied with realities and wak- 
ing action. Outis's poet is fast asleep and dreams everything. 
" Eighth, the poet invites the bird to come in." Another palpable 
failure. Outis's poet indeed asked his bird in ; but my raven 
walked in without any invitation. " Ninth — a confabulation en- 
sues." As regards my poem, true ; but there is not a word of 
any confabulation in Outis's. " Tenth — the bird is supposed to 
be a visitor from the land of spirits." As regards Outis's poem, 
this is true only if we give a wide interpretation to the phrase 
"realms of light." In my poem the bird is not only not from the 
world of spirits, but I have specifically conveyed the idea of his 
Vol. III.— 14. 



314 MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 

having escaped from " some unhappy master," of whom he had 
caught the word " nevermore" — in the concluding stanza, it is 
true, I suddenly convert him into an allegorical emblem or person- 
ification of Mournful Remembrance, out of the shadow of which 
the poet is " lifted nevermore." "Eleventh — allusion is made to 
the departed." Admitted. " Tivelfth — intimation is given that 
the bird knew something of the departed." True as regards Outis's 
poem only. No such intimation is given in mine. " Thirteenth — 
that he knew her worth and loveliness." Again — true only as 
regards Outis's poem. It should be observed here that I have dis- 
proved the twelfth and thirteenth specifications purely for form's 
sake : — they are nothing more than disingenuous repetitions of 
the eleventh. The " allusion to the departed" is the " intimation," 
and the intimation is that " he knew her worth and loveliness." 
"Fourteenth — the bird seems willing to linger with the poet." 
True only as regards my poem — in Outis's (as qouted) there is 
nothing of the kind. " Fifteenth — there is a repetition, in the 
second and fourth lines, of a part, and that the emphatic part, of 
the first and third." What is here asserted is true only of the 
first stanza quoted by Outis, and of the commencement of the 
third. There is nothing of it in the second. In my poem there is 
nothing of it at all, with the exception of the repetition in the 
refrain, occurring at the fifth line of my stanza of six. I quote a 
stanza — by way of rendering everything perfectly intelligible, and 
affording Outis his much coveted " fair play" : 

" Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend !" I shrieked, upstarting — 
" Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore ! 
Leave no black plume as a token of that He thy soul hath spoken ! 
Leave my loneliness unbroken ! — quit the bust above my door ! 
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door !" 
Quoth the raven " Nevermore." 

Sixteenth — concerns the rhythm. Outis's is iambic — mine the 

exact converse, trochaic. Seventeenth — regards the metre. Outis's 

is hexameter, alternating with pentameter, both acatalectic* Mine 

* Tins is as accurate a description as can be given of the alternating (of 
the second and fourth) lines in a few words. The fact is, they are indescriba- 
ble without more trouble than they are worth — and seem to me either to 
have been written by some one ignorant of the principles of verse, or to be 
misquoted. The line, however, 

That tells me thou hast seen and loved my Clare, 



MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 315 

is octameter acatalectic, alternating with heptameter catalectic re- 
peated in the refrain of the fifth verse, and terminating with tetra- 
meter catalectic. Eighteenth and last has respect to the stanza — 
that is to say, to the general arrangement of the metre into masses. 
Of Outis's I need only say that it is a very common and certainly 
a very stupid one. My own has at least the merit oibeing my own. 
No writer, living or dead, has ever employed anything resembling 
it. The innumerable specific differences between it and that of Outis 
it would be a tedious matter to point out — but a far less difficult 
matter than to designate one individual point of similarity. 

And now what are we to think of the eighteen identities of 
Outis — the fifteen that he establishes and the three that he could 
establish if he would — that is to say, if he could only bring him- 
self to be so unmerciful ? Of the whole eighteen, sixteen have 
shown themselves to be lamentable failures — having no more 
substantial basis than sheer misrepresentation, " too paltry for 
any man who values his reputation as a gentleman and a scholar," 
and depending altogether for effect upon the chances that nobody 
would take the trouble to investigate their falsehood or their 
truth. Two — the third and the eleventh — are sustained : and 
these two show that in both poems there is "an allusion to the 
departed," and that in both poems there is " a bird." The first 
idea that suggests itself, at this point, is, whether not to have a 
bird and not to have an allusion to a deceased mistress, would not 
be the truer features of distinctiveness after all — whether two 
poems which have not these items might not be more rationally 
charged with similarity than any two poems which have. But 
having thus disproved all the identities of Outis, (for any one 
comprehending the principle of proof in such cases will admit 
that two only, are in effect just nothing at all,) I am quite ready, 
by way again of affording him "feir play," to expunge every 
thing that has been said on the subject, and proceed as if every 
one of these eighteen identities were in the first bloom and deep- 
est blush of a demonstration. 

I might grant them as demonstrated, to be sure, on the ground 
which I have already touched — that to prove me or any body 

answers the description I have given of the alternating verses, and was, no 
doubt, the general intention for all of them. 



316 MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 

else an imitator, is no mode of showing that Mr. Aldrich or Mr. 
Longfellow is not. But I might safely admit them on another 
and equally substantial consideration, which seems to have been 
overlooked by the zeal of Outis altogether. He has clearly for- 
gotten that the mere number of such coincidences proves nothing, 
because at any moment we can oblige it to prove too much. It 
is the easiest thing imaginable to suggest — and even to do that 
which Outis has failed in doing — to demonstrate a practically in- 
finite series of identities between any two compositions in the 
world — but it by no means follows that all compositions in the 
world have a similarity one with the other, in any comprehensible 
sense of the term. I mean to say that regard must be had not 
only to the number of the coincidences, but to the peculiarity of 
each — this peculiarity growing less and less necessary, and the 
effect of number more and more important, in a ratio prodigiously 
accumulative, as the investigation progresses. And again — regard 
must be had not only to the number and peculiarity of the coin- 
cidences, but to the antagonistic differences, if any, which sur- 
round them — and very especially to the space over which the 
coincidences are spread, and the number or paucity of the events, 
or incidents, from among which the coincidences are selected. 
When Outis, for example, picks out his eighteen coincidences 
(which I am now granting as sustained) from a poem so long as 
The Raven, in collation with a poem not forthcoming, and which 
may, therefore, for anything anybody knows to the contrary, be 
as long as an infinite flock of ravens, he is merely putting himself 
to unnecessary trouble in getting together phantoms of argu- 
ments that can have no substance wherewith to aid his demon- 
stration, until the ascertained extent of the unknown poem from 
which they are culled, affords them a purpose and a palpability. 
Can any man doubt that between The Iliad and the Paradise Lost 
there might be established even a thousand very idiosyncratic iden- 
tities ? — and yet is any man fool enough to maintain that the 
Iliad is the only original of the Paradise Lost ? 

But how is it in the case of Messieurs Aldrich and Hood ? The 
poems here are both remarkably brief — and as I have every in- 
tention to do justice, and no other intention in the world, I shall 
be pardoned for again directing attention to them. (See page 294.) 



MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 31? 

Let it be understood that I am entirely uninformed as to which 
of these two poems was first published. And so little has the 
question of priority to do with my thesis, that I shall not put 
myself to the trouble of inquiring. What I maintain is, that 
there are sufficient grounds for belief that the one is the plagiar- 
ised from the other: — who is the original, and who is the plagiar- 
ist, are points I leave to be settled by any one who thinks the 
matter of sufficient consequence to give it his attention. But the 
man who shall deny the plagiarism abstractly — what is it that 
he calls upon us to believe ? First — that two poets, in remote 
parts of the world, conceived the idea of composing a poem on 
the subject of Death. Of course, there is nothing remarkable in 
this. Death is a naturally poetic theme, and suggests itself by a 
seeming spontaneity to every poet in the world. But had the 
subject chosen by the two widely separated poets, been even 
strikingly peculiar — had it been, for example, a porcupine, apiece 
of gingerbread, or anything unlikely to be made the subject of a 
poem, still no sensible person would have insisted upon the single 
coincidence as any thing beyond a single coincidence. We have 
no difficulty, therefore, in believing what, so far, we are called 
upon to believe. Secondly, we must credit that the two poets 
concluded to write not only on death, but on the death of a 
woman. Here the mind, observing the two identities, reverts to 
their peculiarity or non-peculiarity, and finding no peculiarity — 
admitting that the death of a woman is a naturally suggested 
poetic subject — has no difficulty also in admitting the two coin- 
cidences — as such, and nothing beyond. Thirdly, we are called 
upon to believe that the two poets not only concluded to write 
upon death, and upon the death of a woman, but that, from the 
innumerable phases of death, the phase of tranquillity was hap- 
pened upon by each. Here the intellect commences a slight 
rebellion, but it is quieted by the admission, partly, of the spon- 
taneity with which such an idea might arise, and partly of the 
possibility of the coincidences, independently of the consideration 
of spontaneity. Fourthly, we are required to believe that the two 
poets happened not only upon death — the death of a woman — 
and the tranquil death of a woman — but upon the idea of repre- 
senting this woman as lying tranquilly throughout the whole night, 



318 MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 

in spite of the infinity of different durations which might have 
been imagined for her trance of tranquillity. At this point the 
reason perceives the evidence against these coincidences, (as such 
and nothing more,) to be increasing in geometrical ratio. It dis- 
cards all idea of spontaneity, and if it yield credence at all, yields 
it altogether on the ground of the indisputable possibility. 
Fifthly — we are requested to believe that our poets happened 
not only upon death — upon the death of a woman — upon the 
tranquil death of a woman — and upon the lying of this woman 
tranquilly throughout the night — but, also, upon the idea of se- 
lecting, from the innumerable phases which characterize a tranquil 
death-bed, the identical one of soft breathing — employing also the 
identical word. Here the reason gives up the endeavor to believe 
that one poem has not been suggested by the other : — if it be a 
reason accustomed to deal with the mathematical Calculus of 
Probabilities, it has abandoned this endeavor at the preceding 
stage of the investigation. The evidence of suggestion has now 
become prodigiously accumulate. Each succeeding coincidence 
(however slight) is proof not merely added, but multiplied by 
hundreds of thousands. Sixthly, we are called upon to believe, 
not only that the two poets happened upon all this, together 
with the idea of the soft breathing, but also of employing the 
identical word breathing, in the same line with the identical word, 
night. This proposition the reason receives with a smile. Sev- 
enthly, however, we are required to admit, not only all that has 
been already found inadmissible, but in addition, that the two 
poets conceived the idea of representing the death of a woman as 
occurring precisely at the same instant, out of all the infinite in- 
stants of all time. This proposition the reason receives only with 
a sneer. Eighthly, we are called upon to acquiesce in the as- 
sertion, that not only all these improbabilities are probable, but 
that in addition again, the two poets happened upon the idea of 
representing the woman as stepping immediately into Paradise : — 
and, ninthly, that both should not only happen upon all this, but 
upon the idea of writing a peculiarly brief poem, on so admirably 
suggestive a thesis : — and, tenthly, that out of the various 
rhythms, that is to say, variations of poetic feet, they should have 
both happened upon the iambus : — and, eleventhly, that out of 



MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 319 

the absolutely infinite metres that may be contrived from this 
rhythm, they should both have hit upon the tetrameter acatalec- 
tic for the first and third lines of a stanza : — and, twelfthly, upon 
the trimeter acatalectic for the second and fourth ; and, thirteenth- 
ly, upon an absolute identity of phrase at, fourteenthly, an abso- 
lutely identical position, viz : upon the phrases, " But when the 
morn," &c, and, " But when the sun," <fcc, occurring in the be- 
ginning of the first line in the last stanza of each poem : — and, 
fifteenthly and lastly, that out of the vast multitude of appro- 
priate titles, they should both have happened upon one whose 
identity is interfered with at all, only by the difference between the 
definite and indefinite article. 

Now the chances that these fifteen coincidences, so peculiar in 
character, and all occurring within the compass of eight short 
lines, on the one part, and sixteen on the other — the chances, I 
say, that these coincidences are merely accidental, may be esti- 
mated, possibly, as about one to one hundred millions ; and any 
man who reasons at all, is of course grossly insulted in being 
called upon to credit them as accidental. 

" I have written what I have written," says Outis, " from no 
personal motives, but simply because, from my earliest reading of 
reviews and critical notices, I have been disgusted with this whole- 
sale mangling of victims without rhyme or reason." I have al- 
ready agreed to believe implicitly everything asserted by the ano- 
nymous Outis, and am fully prepared to admit, even, his own 
contradictions, in one sentence, of what he has insisted upon in 
the sentence preceding. I shall assume it is indisputable, then, 
(since Nobody says it) that first, he has no acquaintance with my- 
self and " some acquaintance with Mr. Longfellow," and secondly, 
that he has " written what he has written from no personal mo- 
tives whatever." That he has been disgusted with " the mangling 
of victims without rhyme or reason," is, to be sure, a little unac- 
countable, for the victims without rhyme or reason are precisely 
the victims that ought to be mangled ; but that he has been dis- 
gusted " from his earliest reading" with critical notices and reviews, 
is credible enough if we but imagine his " earliest reading" and 
earliest writing to have taken place about the same epoch of 
time. 



320 MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 

But to be serious ; if Outis has his own private reasons for being 
disgusted with what he terms the " wholesale mangling of victims 
without rhyme or reason," there is not a man living, of common 
sense and common honesty, who has not better reason (if possible) 
to be disgusted with the insufferable cant and shameless misre- 
presentation practised habitually by just such persons as Outis, 
with the view of decrying by sheeu- strength of lungs — of tramp- 
ling down — of rioting down — of mobbing down any man with a 
soul that bids him come out from among the general corruption 
of our public press, and take his stand upon the open ground 
of rectitude and honor. The Outises who practice this species of 
bullyism are, as a matter of course, anonymous. They are either 
the " victims without rhyme or reason who have been mangled by 
wholesale," or they are the relatives, or the relatives of the rela- 
tives of the " victims without rhyme or reason who have been 
mangled by wholesale." Their watchwords are " carping little- 
ness," " envious malignity," and " personal abuse." Their low 
artifices are insinuated calumnies, and indefatigable whispers of 
regret, from post to pillar, that " Mr. So-and-So, or Mr. This-and- 
That will persist in rendering himself so dreadfully unpopular" — 
no one, in the meantime, being more thoroughly and painfully 
aware than these very Outises, that the unpopularity of the just 
critic who reasons his way, guiltless of dogmatism, is confined 
altogether within the limits of the influence of the victims without 
rhyme and reason who have been mangled by wholesale. Even 
the manifest injustice of a Gifford is, I grieve to say, an exceed- 
ingly popular thing ; and there is no literary element of popu- 
larity more absolutely and more universally effective than the 
pungent impartiality of a Wilson or a Macaulay. In regard to 
my own course — without daring to arrogate to myself a single 
other quality of either of these eminent men than that pure con- 
tempt for mere prejudice and conventionality which actuated them 
all, I will now unscrupulously call the attention of the Outises to 
the fact, that it was during what they (the Outises) would insin- 
uate to be the unpopularity of my " wholesale mangling of the 
victims without rhyme and reason" that, in one year, the circula- 
tion of the " Southern Messenger" (a five-dollar journal) extended 
itself from seven hundred to nearly five thousand, — and that, in 



MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 321 

little more than twice the same time, " Graham's Magazine" 
swelled its list from five to fifty-two thousand subscribers. 

I make no apology for these egotisms, and I proceed with them 
without hesitation — for, in myself, I am but defending a set of 
principles which no honest man need be ashamed of defending, 
and for whose defence no honest man will consider an apology 
required. The usual watchwords of the Outises, when repelling a 
criticism, — their customary charges, overt or insinuated, are (as I 
have already said) those of " personal abuse " and " wholesale (or 
indiscriminate) mangling." In the present instance the latter solely 
is employed — for not even an Outis can acuse me, with even a 
decent show of verisimilitude, of having ever descended, in the 
most condemnatory of my reviews, to that personal abuse which, 
upon one or two occasions, has indeed been levelled at myself, in 
the spasmodic endeavors of aggrieved authors to rebut what I 
have ventured to demonstrate. I have then to refute only the 
accusation of mangling by wholesale — and I refute it by the 
simplest reference to fact. What I have written remains ; and is 
readily accessible in any of our public libraries. I have had one 
or two impotent enemies, and a multitude of cherished friends — 
and both friends and enemies have been, for the most part, literary 
people ; yet no man can point to a single critique, among the very 
numerous ones which I have written during the last ten years, 
which is either wholly fault-finding or wholly in approbation ; nor 
is there an instance to be discovered, among all that I have pub- 
lished, of my having set forth, either in praise or censure, a single 
opinion upon any critical topic of moment, without attempting, at 
least, to give it authority by something that wore the semblance 
of a reason. Now, is there a writer in the land, who, having dealt 
in criticism even one-fourth as much as myself, can of his 
own criticisms, conscientiously say the same ? The fact is, that 
very many of the most eminent men in America whom I am 
proud to number among the sincerest of my friends, have been 
rendered so solely by their approbation of my comments upon 
their own works — comments in great measure directed against 
themselves as authors — belonging altogether to that very class of 
criticism which it is the petty policy of the Outises to cry down, 
with their diminutive voices, as offensive on the score of wholesale 

14* 



322 MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 

vituperation and personal abuse. If, to be brief, in what I have 
put forth there has been a preponderance of censure over com- 
mendation, — is there not to be imagined for this preponderance a 
more charitable motive than any which the Outises have been 
magnanimous enough to assign me — is not this preponderance, 
in a word, the natural and inevitable tendency of all criticism 
worth the name in this age of so universal an authorship, that no 
man in his senses will pretend to deny the vast predominance of 
good writers over bad ? 

And now, says Outis, for the matter of Longfellow's imitations — in what 
do they consist ? — The critic is not very specific in this charge. Of what kind 
are they ? Are they imitations of thought ? Why not call them plagiarisms 
then, and show them up ? Or are they only verbal imitations of style ? 
Perhaps this is one of them, in his poem on the " Sea Weed," 

drifting, drifting, drifting, 

On the shifting 

Currents of the restless main. 

resembling in form and collocation only, a line in a beautiful and very pow- 
erful poem of Mr. Edgar A. Poe. (Write it rather Edgar, a Poet, and 
then it is right to a T.) I have not the poem before me, and have forgotten 
its title. But he is describing a magnificent intellect in ruins, if I remember 
rightly — and, speaking of the eloquence of its better days, represents it as 

flowing, flowing, flowing, 

Like a river. 

Is this what the critic means ? Is it such imitations as this that he alludes 
to ? If not, I am at fault, either in my reading of Longfellow, or in my gen- 
eral familiarity with the American Poets. If this be the kind of imitation 
referred to, permit me to say, the charge is too paltry for any man, who 
valued his reputation either as a gentleman or a scholar. 

Elsewhere he says : — 

Moreover, this poem contains an example of that kind of repetition which 
I have supposed the critic meant to charge upon Longfellow as one of his 
imitations — 

Away— away— away— &c. 

I might pursue it farther, but I will not. Such criticisms only make the 
author of them contemptible, without soiling a plume in the cap of his victim. 

The first point to be here observed is the complacency with 
which Outis supposes me to make a certain charge and then vitu- 
perates me for his own absurd supposition. Were I, or any man, 
to accuse Mr. Longfellow of imitation on the score of thrice em- 
ploying a word in consecutive connexion, then I (or any man) 
would only be guilty of as great a sotticism as was Outis in ac- 
cusing me of imitation on the score of the refrain. The repeti- 
tion in question is assuredly not claimed by myself as original — I 
should therefore be wary how I charged Mr. Longfellow with imi- 



MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 



323 



tating it from myself. It is, in fact, a musical effect, which is the 
common property of all mankind, and has been their common 
property for ages. Nevertheless the quotation of this 

drifting, drifting, drifting, 

is, on the part of Outis, a little unfortunate. Most certainly the 
supposed imitation had never been observed by me — nor even 
had I observed it, should I have considered it individually, as a 
point of any moment ; — but all will admit, (since Outis himself 
has noticed the parallel,) that, were a second parallel of any 
obviousness to be established from the same brief poem, " The 
Sea-Weed," this second would come in very strong corroboration 
of the first. Now, the sixth stanza of this very " Sea-Weed " 
(which was first published in " Graham's Magazine " for January, 
1845) commences with 

From the far off isles enchanted; 

and in a little poem of my own, addressed " To Mary," and first 
published at page 636 of the first volume of the "Southern 
Literary Messenger," will be found the lines : 

And thus thy memory is to me 
Like some enchanted far off isle 
In some tumultuous sea. 

But to show, in general, what I mean by accusing Mr. Long- 
fellow of imitation, I collate his " Midnight Mass for the Dying 
Year" with " The Death of the Old Year" of Tennyson. 



MIDNIGHT MASS FOR THE DYING YEAR. 



Yes, the Year is growing old, 
And his eye is pale and bleared, 

Death, with frosty hand and cold, 
Plucks the old man by the beard, 
Sorely, — sorely ! 

The leaves are falling, falling, 

Solemnly and slow ; 
Caw, caw, the rooks are calling ; 

It is a sound of wo, 
A sound of wo ! 

Through woods and mountain-passes 
The winds, like anthems, roll ; 

They are chanting solemn masses, 
Singing, Pray for this poor soul, 
Pray, — pray ! 



And the hooded clouds, like friars, 
Tell their beads in drops of rain, 

And patter their doleful prayers ; 
But their prayers are all in vain, 
All in vain ! 

There he stands in the foul weather, 
The foolish, fond Old Year, 

Crowned with wild flowers and with 
Like weak, despised Lear, [heather, 
A king, — a king ! 

Then comes the summer-like day, 

Bids the old man rejoice ! 
His joy ! his last ! 0, the old man 

Loveth her ever soft voice [gray, 
Gentle and low. 



324 



MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 



To the crimson woods he saith — 
To the voice gentle and low, 

Of the soft air like a daughter's breath, 
Pray do not mock me so ! 
Do not laugh at me ! 

And now the sweet day is dead ; 

Cold in his arms it lies ; 
No stain from its breath is spread 

Over the glassy skies, 
No mist nor stain ! 

Then, too, the Old Year dieth, 
And the forests utter a moan, 

Like the voice of one who crieth 
In the wilderness alone, 
Vex not his ghost ! 



Then comes, with an awful roar, 

Gathering and sounding on, 
The storm-wind from Labrador, 
The wind Euroclydon, 
The storm- wind ! 
Howl ! howl ! and from the forest 

Sweep the red leaves away ! 
Would, the sins that thou abhorrest, 
O soul ! could thus decay, 
And be swept away ! 
For there shall come a mightier blast> 

There shall be a darker day ; 
And the stars, from heaven down-cast, 
Like red leaves be swept away ! 
Kyrie Eleyson ! 
Christie Eleyson ! 



THE DEATH OF THE OLD YEAR. 

Full knee-deep lies the winter snow, 

And the winter winds are wearily sighing ; 
Toll ye the church-bell sad and low, 
And tread softly, and speak low, 
For the old year lies a dying. 
Old Year, you must not die, 
You came to us so readily, 
You lived with us so steadily, 
Old Year, you shall not die. 

He lieth still : he doth not move ; 

He will not see the dawn of day ; 
He hath no other life above — 
He gave me a friend, and a true, true love, 
And the New Year will take 'em away. 
Old Year, you must not go, 
So long as you have been with us, 
Such joy as you have seen with us, 
Old year, you shall not go. 

He frothed his bumpers to the brim ; 

A jolher year we shall not see ; 
But though his eyes are waxing dim, 
And though his foes speak ill of him, 
He was a friend to me. 

Old Year you shall not die ; 
We did so laugh and cry with you, 
I've half a mind to die with you, 
Old Year, if you must die. 

He was full of joke and jest, 

But all his merry quips are o'er ; 
To see him die, across the waste 
His son and heir doth ride post haste, 
But he'll be dead before. 



MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 325 

Every one for his own ; 
The night is starry and cold, my friend, 
And the New Year, blithe and bold, my friend, 

Comes up to take his own. 

How hard he breathes ! Over the snow 

I heard just now the crowing cock. 
The shadows flicker to and fro : 
The cricket chirps : the light burns low : 
'Tis nearly one o'clock. 

Shake hands before you die ; 
Old Year, we'll dearly rue for you, 
What is it we can do for you ? 
Speak out before you die. 

His face is growing sharp and thin — 

Alack ! our friend is gone ! 
Close up his eyes ; tie up his chin ; 
Step from the corpse and let him in 
That standeth there alone, 
And waiteth at the door. 
There's a new foot on the floor, my friend, 
And a new face at the door, my friend, 
A new face at the door. 

I have no idea of commenting, at any length, upon this imita- 
tion, which is too palpable to be mistaken, and which belongs to 
the most barbarous class of literary piracy : that class in which, 
while the words of the wronged author are avoided, his most 
intangible, and therefore his least defensible and least reclaimable 
property, is appropriated. Here, with the exception of lapses 
which, however, speak volumes, (such for instance as the use of 
the capitalized " Old Year," the general peculiarity of the rhythm, 
and the absence of rhyme at the end of each stanza,) there is 
nothing of a visible or palpable nature by which the source of 
the American poem can be established. But then nearly all that 
is valuable in the piece of Tennyson, is the first conception of 
personifying the Old Year as a dying old man, with the singularly 
wild and fantastic manner in which that conception is carried 
out. Of this conception and of this manner he is robbed. What 
is here not taken from Tennyson, is made up mosaically, from 
the death scene of Cordelia, in "Lear" — to which I refer the 
curious reader. 

In "Graham's Magazine" for February, 1843, there appeared 
a poem, furnished by Professor Longfellow, entitled " The Good 
George Campbell," and purporting to be a translation from the 



326 



MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 



German of 0. L. B. Wolff. In "Minstrelsy Ancient and 
Modern, by William Motherwell, published by John Wylie, 
Glasgow, 1827," is to be found a poem partly compiled and 
partly written by Motherwell himself. It is entitled " The Bonnie 
George Campbell." I give the two side by side : 



MOTHERWELL. 

Hie upon Hielands 

And low upon Tay, 
Bonnie George Campbell 

Rade out on a day. 
Saddled and bridled 

And gallant rade he ; 
Hame cam his gude horse, 

But never cam he. 

Out cam his auld mither 

Greeting fu' sair, 
And out cam his bonnie bride 

Rivin' her hair. 
Saddled and bridled 

And booted rade he ; 
Toom hame cam the saddle, 

But never cam he. 

" My meadow lies green, 

And my corn is unshorn; 
My barn is too big, 

And my baby's unborn." 
Saddled and bridled 

And booted rade he ; 
Toom hame cam the saddle, 

But never cam he. 



LONGFELLOW. 

High on the Highlands, 

And deep in the day, 
The good George Campbell 

Rode free and away. 
AU saddled, all bridled, 

Gay garments he wore ; 
Home his gude steed, 

But he nevermore. 

Out came his mother, 

Weeping so sadly ; 
Out came his beauteous bride 

Weeping so madly. 
All saddled, aU bridled, 

Strong armor he wore ; 
Home came the saddle, 

But he nevermore. 

My meadow lies green, 

Unreaped is my corn. 
My garner is empty, 

My child is unborn. 
All saddled, all bridled, 

Sharp weapons he bore : 
Home came the saddle, 

But he nevermore ! 



Professor Longfellow defends himself (I learn) from the charge 
of imitation in this case, by the assertion that he did translate 
from Wolff, but that Wolff copied from Motherwell. I am 
willing to believe almost anything rather than so gross a plagiar- 
ism as this seems to be — but there are difficulties which should 
be cleared up. In the first place how happens it that, in the 
transmission from the Scotch into the German, and again from 
the German into the English, not only the versification should 
have been rigidly preserved, but the rhymes, and alliterations ? 
Again; how are we to imagine that Mr. Longfellow with his 
known intimate acquaintance with Motherwell's "Minstrelsy" 
did not at once recognise so remarkable a poem when he met it 



MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 327 

in Wolff? I have now before me a large volume of songs, ballads, 
etc. collected by Wolff; but there is here no such poem — and, 
to be sure, it should not be sought in such a collection. No 
collection of his own poems has been published, and the piece of 
which we are in search of must be fugitive — unless, indeed, it is 
included in a volume of translations from various tongues, of 
which 0. L. B. Wolff is also the author — but of which I am 
unable to obtain a copy.* It is by no means improbable that 
here the poem in question is to be found — but in this case it must 
have been plainly acknowledged as a translation, with its original 
designated. How, then, could Professor Longfellow have trans- 
lated it as original with Wolft"? These are mysteries yet to be 
solved. It is observable — peculiarly so —that the Scotch " Toom " 
is left untranslated in the version of Graham's Magazine. Will 
it be found that the same omission occurs in Wolff's version? 

In "The Spanish Student" of Mr. Longfellow, at page 80, 
will be found what follows : 

Scene IV. — Preciosa's chamber. She is sitting with a book in her hand near 
a table, on which are flowers. A bird singing in its cage. The Count of 
Lara enters behind, unperceived. 

Preciosa reads. 

All are sleeping, weary heart . 
Thou, thou only sleepless art ! 

Heigho ! I wish Victorian were here. 
I know not what it is makes me so restless ! 
Thou little prisoner with thy motly coat, 
That from thy vaulted, wiry dungeon singest, 
Like thee I am a captive, and, like thee, 
I have a gentle gaoler. Lack-a-day ! 

All are sleeping, weary heart! 
Thou, thou only sleepless art ! 
All this throbbing, all this aching, 
Evermore shall keep thee waking, 
For a heart in sorrow breaking 
Thinketh ever of its smart ! 

Thou speakest truly, poet ! and methinks 
More hearts are breaking in this world of ours 
Than one would say. In distant villages 
And solitudes remote, where winds have wafted 
The barbed seeds of love, or birds of passage 
Scattered them in their flight, do they take root, 
And grow in silence, and in silence perish. 

* Sammlung vorzuglicher Volkslieder der bekanntesten Nationen, gros- 
tentheils zun ersten male, metrisch in das Deutche ubertragen. Frankfurt, 
1837. 



328 MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 

"Who hears the falling of the forest leaf ? 

Or who takes note of every flower that dies ? 

Heigho ! I wish Victorian would come. 

Dolores! [Turns to lay down her book, and perceives the Count] Ha! 

Lara. Senora, pardon me. 

Preeiosa. How's this ? Dolores ! 

Lara. Pardon me — 

Preeiosa. Dolores ! 

Lara. Be not alarmed ; I found no one in waiting. 
If I have been too bold 

Preeiosa [turning her back upon him]. You are too bold ! 
Retire ! retire, and leave me ! 

Lara. My dear lady, 
First hear me ! I beseech you, let me speak ! 
'Tis for your good I come. 

Preeiosa [turning toward him with indignation] Begone ! begone ! 
You are the Count of Lara, but your deeds 
Would make the statues of your ancestors 
Blush on their tombs ! Is it Castilian honor, 
Is it Castilian pride, to steal in here 
Upon a friendless girl, to do her wrong ? 

shame ! shame ! shame ! that you, a nobleman, 
Should be so little noble in your thoughts 

As to send jewels here to win my love, 
And think to buy my honor with your gold ! 

1 have no words to tell you how I scorn you ! 
Begone ! Ihe sight of you is hateful to me ! 
Begone, I say I 

A few passages farther on, in the same scene, we meet the fol- 
lowing stage directions : — " He tries to embrace her, she starts 
back and draws a dagger from her bosom" A little farther still 
and " Victorian enters behind." Compare all this with a " Scene 
from Politian, an Unpublished Tragedy by Edgar A. Poe," to be 
found in the second volume of the " Southern Literary Messenger." 

The scene opens with the following stage directions : 

A lady's apartment, with a windoio open and looking into a garden. 
Lalage in deep mourning, reading at a table, on which lis some books 
and a hand mirror. Ln the back ground, Jacinta leans carelessly on 
the back of a chair 

Lalage reading. " It in another climate, so he said, 
Bore a bright golden flower but not i' this soil. 

[Pauses, turns over some leaves, and then resumes] 
No ling' ring winters there, nor snow, nor shower, 
But ocean ever, to refresh mankind, 
Breathes the shrill spirit of the western wind." 
Oh, beautiful ! most beautiful ! how like 
To what my fever'd soul doth dream of Heaven ! 
O happy land ! [ pauses] She died — the maiden died — 
O still more happy maiden who could'nt die. 
Jacinta ! [Jacinta returns no answer, and Lalage presently resumes] 






MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 329 

Again a similar tale, 

Told of a beauteous dame beyond the sea ! 

Thus speaketh one Ferdinand i' the words of the play, 

" She died full young " — one Bossola answers him 

" I think not so ; her infelicity 

Seemed to have years too many." Ah luckless lady ! 

Jacinta ! [Still no answer.] Here's a far sterner story 

But like, oh very like in its despair, — 

Of that Egyptian queen, winning so easily 

A thousand hearts, losing at length her own. 

She died. Thus endeth the history, and her maids 

Lean over her and weep — two gentle maids 

With gentle names, Eiros and Charmion. 

Rainbow and Dove — Jacinta ! 

[Jacinta finally in a discussion about certain jewels, insults her mis- 
tress, who bursts into tears.] 

Lalaye. Poor Lalage ! and is it come to this ? 

Thy servant maid ! but courage ! — 'tis but a viper 

Whom thou hast cherished to sting thee to the soul ! 

[Taking up the mirror] 
Ha ! here at least 's a friend — too much a friend 
In earlier days — a friend will not deceive thee. 
Fair mirror and true ! now tell me, for thou canst, 
A tale — a pretty tale — and heed thou not 
Though it be rife with wo. It answers me, 
It speaks of sunken eyes, and wasted cheeks, 
And beauty long deceased — remembers me 
Of Joy departed — Hope, the Seraph Hope 
Inurned and entombed ! — now, in a tone 
Low, sad, and solemn, but most audible 
Whispers of early grave untimely yawning 
For ruined maid. Fair mirror and true ! thou liest not ! 
Thou hast no end to gain — no heart to break. 
Castiglione bed who said he loved — 
Thou true — he false ! — false ! — false ! 

[While she speaks a Monk enters her apartment, and approaches 
unobserved.] 

Monk. Refuge thou hast 
Sweet daughter ! in Heaven. Think of eternal things ! 
Give up thy soul to penitence, and pray. 

Lalage. I cannot pray ! — my soul is at war with God ! 
[Arising hurriedly.] 
The frightful sounds of merriment below 
Disturb my senses — go, I cannot pray ! 
The sweet airs from the garden worry me ! 
Thy presence grieves me — go ! — thy priestly raiment 
Fills me with dread — thy ebony crucifix 
With horror and awe ! 

Monk. Think of thy precious soul ! 

Lalage. Think of my early days ! — think of my father 
And mother in Heaven ! think of our quiet home 
And the rivulet that ran before the door ! 
Think of my little sisters ! — think of them ! 
And think of me ! — tlrink of my trusting love 



330 MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 

And confidence — his vows — my ruin — think — think 
Of my unspeakable misery ! — begone ! 
Yet stay ! yet stay ! what was it thou saidst of prayer 
And penitence ? Didst thou not speak of faith 
And vows before the throne ? 

Monk. I did. 

Lalage. 'Tis well. 
There is a vow were fitting should be made — 
A sacred vow, imperative, and urgent — 
A solemn vow. 

Monk. Daughter, this zeal is well. 

Lalage. Father ! this zeal is anything but well. 
Hast thou a crucifix fit for this thing ? 
A crucifix whereon to register 
A pious vow ? [He hands her his own.'] 

Not that — oh ! no ! — no ! no ! [Shuddering.] 
Not that ! not that ! I tell thee, holy man, 
Thy raiments and thy ebony cross affright me ! 
Stand back ! I have a crucifix myself — 
/ have a crucifix ! Methinks 'twere fitting 
The deed — the vow — the symbol of the deed — ■ 
And the deed's register should tally, father ! 
Behold the cross wherewith a vow like mine 
Is written in Heaven ! 

[Draws a cross-handled dagger and raises it on high.] 

Monk. Thy words are madness, daughter ! 
And speak a purpose unholy — thy lips are livid — 
Thine eyes are wild — tempt not the wrath divine — 
Pause ere too late ! — oh ! be not — be not rash ! 
Swear not the oath — oh ! swear it not ! 

Lalage. 'Tis sworn ! 

The coincidences here are too markedly peculiar to be gain- 
sayed. The sitting at the table with books, etc. — the flowers on 
the one hand, and the garden on the other — the presence of the 
pert maid — the reading aloud from the book — the pausing and 
commenting — the plaintiveness of what is read, in accordance 
with the sorrow of the reader — the abstraction — the frequent 
calling of the maid by name — the refusal of the maid to an- 
swer — the jewels — the " begone" — the unseen entrance of a third 
person from behind — and the drawing of the dagger — are points 
sufficiently noticeable to establish at least the imitation beyond 
all doubt. Let us now compare the concluding lines of Mr. Long- 
fellow's "Autumn" with that of Mr. Bryant's " Thanatopsis." 
Mr. B. has it thus : 

So live, that when thy summons comes to join 

The innumerable caravan that moves 

To that mysterious realm where each shall take 

His chamber in the silent halls of Death, 



MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 331 

Thou go not, like the quarry slave at night, 
Scourged to his dungeon ; but, sustained and soothed 
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave. 
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. 

Mr. L. thus : 

To him the wind, aye and the yellow leaves 
Shall have a voice and give him eloquent teachings. 
He shall so hear the solemn hymn that Death 
Has lifted up for all, that he shall go 
To his long resting-place without a tear. 

Again, in his "Prelude to the Voices of the Night," Mr. Long- 
fellow says : 

Look then into thine heart and write ! 

Sir Philip Sidney in the " Astrophal and Stella" has : 

Foole, said my Muse to me, looke in thy heart and write ! 

Again — in Longfellow's " Midnight Mass " we read : 

And the hooded clouds like friars. 

The Lady in Milton's "Comus" says: 

"When the gray-hooded even 

Like a sad votarist in palmer's weeds. 

And again : — these lines by Professor Longfellow will be re- 
membered by everybody : 

Art is long and time is fleeting, 

And our hearts, though stout and brave, 
Still like muffled drums are beating 

Funeral marches to the grave. 

But if any one will turn to page 6Q of John Sharpe's edition 
of Henry Headley's " Select Beauties of Ancient English Poetry," 
published at London in 1810, he will there find an Exequy on 
the death of his wife by Henry King, Bishop of Chichester, and 
therein also the following lines, where the author is speaking of 
following his wife to the grave : 

But hark ! my pulse, like a soft drum, 
Beats my approach — tells thee I come ! 
And slow howe'er my marches be, 
I shall at last sit down by thee. 

Were I disposed, indeed, to push this subject any farther, I 
should have little difficulty in culling, from the works of the au- 
thor of "Outre Mer," a score or two of imitations quite as pal- 
pable- as any upon which I have insisted. The fact of the matter 



332 MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 

is, that the friends of Mr. Longfellow, so far from undertaking to 
talk about rny " carping littleness " in charging Mr. Longfellow 
with imitation, should have given me credit, under the circum- 
stances, for great moderation in charging him with imitation 
alone. Had I accused him, in loud terms, of manifest and con- 
tinuous plagiarism, I should but have echoed the sentiment of 
every man of letters in the land beyond the immediate influence 
of the Longfellow coterie. And since I, " knowing what I know 
and seeing what I have seen " — submitting in my own person to 
accusations of plagiarism for the very sins of this gentleman 
against myself — since I contented myself, nevertheless, with 
simply setting forth the merits of the poet in the strongest light, 
whenever an opportunity was afforded me, can it be considered 
either decorous or equitable on the part of Professor Longfellow 
to beset me, upon my first adventuring an infinitesimal sentence 
of dispraise, with ridiculous anonymous letters from his friends, 
and moreover, with malice prepense, to instigate against me the 
pretty little witch entitled " Miss Walter ;" advising her and in- 
structing her to pierce me to death with the needles of innu- 
merable epigrams, rendered unnecessarily and therefore cruelly 
painful to my feelings, by being first carefully deprived of the 
point ? 

It should not be supposed that I feel myself individually 
aggrieved in the letter of Outis. He has praised me even more 
than he has blamed. In replying to him, my design has been to 
place fairly and distinctly before the literary public certain princi- 
ples of criticism for which I have been long contending, and 
which, through sheer misrepresentation, were in danger of being 
misunderstood. 

Having brought the subject, in this view, to a close, I now feel 
at liberty to add a few words, by way of freeing myself of any 
suspicion of malevolence or discourtesy. The thesis of my argu- 
ment, in general, has been the definition of the grounds on which 
a charge of plagiarism may be based, and of the species of ratio- 
cination by which it is to be established : that is all. It will be 
seen by any one who shall take the trouble to read what I have 
written, that I make no charge of moral delinquency against either 
Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Aldrich, or Mr. Hood : — indeed, lest in the 



MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER PLAGIARISTS. 333 

heat of argument, I may have uttered any words which may 
admit of being tortured into such an interpretation, I here fully 
disclaim them upon the spot. 

In fact, the one strong point of defence for his friends has been 
unaccountably neglected by Outis. To attempt the rebutting of a 
charge of plagiarism by the broad assertion that no such thing as 
plagiarism exists, is a sotticism, and no more — but there would 
have been nothing of unreason in rebutting the charge as urged 
either against Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Aldrich, or Mr. Hood, by the 
proposition that no true poet can be guilty of a meanness — that 
the converse of the proposition is a contradiction in terms. 
Should there be found any one willing to dispute with me this 
point, I would decline the disputation on the ground that my 
arguments are no arguments to him. 

It appears to me that what seems to be the gross inconsistency 
of plagiarism as perpetrated by a poet, is very easily thus resolv- 
ed : — the poetic sentiment (even without reference to the poetic 
power) implies a peculiarly, perhaps an abnormally keen appre- 
ciation of the beautiful, with a longing for its assimilation, or 
absorption, into the poetic identity. What the poet intensely 
admires, becomes thus, in very fact, although only partially, a por- 
tion of his own intellect. It has a secondary origination within 
his own soul — an origination altogether apart, although springing, 
from its primary origination from without. The poet is thus pos- 
sessed by another's thought, and cannot be said to take of it, pos- 
session. But, in either view, he thoroughly feels it as his own — 
and this feeling is counteracted only by the sensible presence of 
its true, palpable origin in the volume from which he has derived 
it — an origin which, in the long lapse of years it is almost im- 
possible not to forget — for in the meantime the thought itself is 
forgotten. But the frailest association will regenerate it — it 
springs up with all the vigor of a new birth — its absolute origi- 
nality is not even a matter of suspicion — and when the poet has 
written it and printed it, and on its account is charged with 
plagiarism, there will be no one in the world more entirely as- 
tounded than himself. Now from what I have said it will be evi- 
dent that the liability to accidents of this character is in the direct 
ratio of the poetic sentiment — of the susceptibility to the poetic 



334 MR. LONGFELLOW, MR. WILLIS, AND THE DRAMA. 

impression ; and in fact all literary history demonstrates that, for 
the most frequent and palpable plagiarisms, we must search the 
works of the most eminent poets. 



MR. LONGFELLOW, MR. WILLIS, AND THE DRAMA. 

A Biographist of Berryer calls him " Vhomme qui dans sa 
description, demande le plus grande quantite possible d 1 antitheses 
— but that ever recurring topic, the decline of the drama, seems 
to have consumed, of late, more of the material in question than 
would have sufficed for a dozen prime ministers — even admitting 
them to be French. Every trick of thought, and every harlequin- 
ade of phrase have been put in operation for the purpose " de 
nier ce qui est, et d' expliquer ce qui rCest pasS 

Ce qui rfest pas : — for the drama has not declined. The facts 
and the philosophy of the case seem to be these. The great op- 
ponent to Progress is Conservatism. In other words — the great 
adversary of Invention is Imitation : — the propositions are in 
spirit identical. Just as an art is imitative, is it stationary. The 
most imitative arts are the most prone to repose — and the con- 
verse. Upon the utilitarian — upon the business arts, where Ne- 
cessity impels, Invention, Necessity's well-understood offspring, is 
ever in attendance. And the less we see of the mother the less 
we behold of the child. No one complains of the decline of the 
art of Engineering. Here the Reason, which never retrogrades, 
or reposes, is called into play. But let us glance at Sculpture. 
We are not worse, here, than the ancients, let pedantry say what 
it may, (the Venus of Canova is worth, at any time, two of that of 
Cleomenes,) but it is equally certain that we have made, in gen- 
eral, no advances ; and Sculpture, properly considered, is perhaps 
the most imitative of all arts which have a right to the title of 
Art at all. Looking next at Painting, we find that we have to 
boast of progress only in the ratio of the inferior imitativeness of 
Painting, when compared with Sculpture. As far indeed as we 
have any means of judging, our improvement has been exceeding- 
ly little, and did we know anything of ancient Art, in this depart- 
ment, we might be astonished at discovering that we had 



MR. LONGFELLOW, MR. WILLIS, AND THE DRAMA. 335 

advanced even far less than we suppose. As regards Architecture, 
whatever progress we have made, has been precisely in those par- 
ticulars which have no reference to imitation : — that is to say we 
have improved the utilitarian and not the ornamental provinces 
of the art. Where Reason predominated, we advanced ; where 
mere Feeling or Taste was the guide, we remained as we were. 

Coming to the Drama, we shall see that in its mechanisms we 
have made progress, while in its spirituality we have done little or 
nothing for centuries certainly — and, perhaps, little or nothing for 
thousands of years. And this is because what we term the 
spirituality of the drama is precisely its imitative portion — is ex- 
actly that portion which distinguishes it as one of the principal of 
the imitative arts. 

Sculptors, painters, dramatists, are, from the very nature of 
their material, — their spiritual material — imitators — conservatists 
— prone to repose in old Feeling and in antique Taste. For this 
reason — and for this reason only — the arts of Sculpture, Painting 
and the Drama have not advanced — or have advanced feebly, and 
inversely in the ratio of their imitativeness. 

But it by no means follows that either has declined. All seem 
to have declined, because they have remained stationary while the 
multitudinous other arts (of reason) have flitted so rapidly by 
them. In the same manner the traveller by railroad can imagine 
that the trees by the wayside are retrograding. The trees in this 
case are absolutely stationary — but the Drama has not been alto- 
gether so, although its progress has been so slight as not to 
interfere with the general effect — that of seeming retrogradation 
or decline. 

This seeming retrogradation, however, is to all practical intents 
an absolute one. Whether the drama has declined, or whether 
it has merely remained stationary, is a point of no importance, so 
far as concerns the public encouragement of the drama. It is 
unsupported, in either case, because it does not deserve support. 

But if this stagnation, or deterioration, grows out of the very 
idiosyncrasy of the drama itself, as one of the principal of the 
imitative arts, how is it possible that a remedy shall be applied — 
since it is clearly impossible to alter the nature of the art, and yet 
leave it the art which it now is ? 



336 MR. LONGFELLOW, MR. WILLIS, AND THE DRAMA. 

We have already spoken of the improvements effected in Archi- 
tecture, in all its utilitarian departments, and in the Drama, at all 
the points of its mechanism. " Wherever Reason predominates 
we advance ; where mere Feeling or Taste is the guide, we re- 
main as we are." We wish now to suggest that, by the engraft- 
ing of Reason upon Feeling and Taste, we shall be able, and thus 
alone shall be able, to force the modern drama into the produc- 
tion of any profitable fruit. 

At present, what is it we do ? We are content if, with Feeling 
and Taste, a dramatist does as other dramatists have done. The 
most successful of the more immediately modern playwrights 
has been Sheridan Knowles, and to play Sheridan Knowles seems 
to be the highest ambition of our writers for the stage. Now the 
author of " The Hunchback,'' possesses what we are weak enough 
to term the true " dramatic feeling," and this true dramatic feel- 
ing he has manifested in the most preposterous series of imitations 
of the Elizabethan drama, by which ever mankind were insulted 
and beguiled. Not only did he adhere to the old plots, the old 
characters, the old stage conventionalities throughout ; but, he 
went even so far as to persist in the obsolete phraseologies of the 
Elizabethan period — and just in proportion to his obstinacy and 
absurdity at all points, did we pretend to like him the better, and 
pretend to consider him a great dramatist. 

Pretend — for every particle of it was pretence. Never was en- 
thusiasm more utterly false than that which so many " respectable 
audiences" endeavored to get up for these plays — endeavored to 
get up, first, because there was a general desire to see the drama 
revive, and secondly, because we had been all along entertaining 
the fancy that " the decline of the drama" meant little, if any- 
thing, else than its deviation from the Elizabethan routine — and 
that, consequently, the return to the Elizabethan routine was, and 
of necessity must be, the revival of the drama. 

But if the principles we have been at some trouble in explain- 
ing, are true — and most profoundly do we feel them to be so — if 
the spirit of imitation is, in fact, the real source of drama's stagna- 
tion — and if it is so because of the tendency in all imitation to 
render Reason subservient to Feeling and to Taste — it is clear 
that only by deliberate counteracting of the spirit, and of the 



MR. LONGFELLOW, MR. WILLIS, AND THE DRAMA. 337 

tendency of the spirit, we can hope to succeed in the drama's 
revival. 

The first thing necessary is to burn or bury the " old models," 
and to forget, as quickly as possible, that ever a play has been 
penned. The second thing is to consider de novo what are the 
capabilities of the drama — not merely what hitherto have been its 
conventional purposes. The third and last point has reference to 
the composition of a play (showing to the fullest extent these ca- 
pabilities) conceived and constructed with Feeling and with Taste, 
but with Feeling and Taste guided and controlled in every par- 
ticular by the details of Reason — of Common Sense — in a word, 
of a Natural Art. 

It is obvious, in the meantime, that towards the good end in 
view, much may be effected by discriminative criticism on what 
has already been done. The field, thus stated, is of course, prac- 
tically illimitable — and to Americans the American drama is the 
special point of interest. We propose, therefore, in a series of 
papers, to take a somewhat deliberate survey of some few of the 
most noticeable American plays. We shall do this without refer- 
ence either to the date of the composition, or its adaptation for 
the closet or the stage. W T e shall speak with absolute frankness 
both of merits and defects — our principal object being understood 
not as that of mere commentary on the individual play — but on 
the drama in general, and on the American drama in especial, of 
which each individual play is a constituent part. We will com- 
mence at once with 

TORTESA, THE USURER. 

This is the third dramatic attempt of Mr. Willis, and may be 
regarded as particularly successful, since it has received, both on 
the stage and in the closet, no stinted measure of commendation. 
This success, as well as the high reputation of the author, will 
justify us in a more extended notice of the play than might, un- 
der other circumstances, be desirable. 

The story runs thus : — Tortesa, an usurer of Florence, and 
whose character is a mingled web of good and evil feelings, gets 
into his possession the palace and lands of a certain Count Fal- 
cone. The usurer would wed the daughter (Isabella) of Falcone 
not through love, but, in his own words, 

Vol. III.— 15. 



388 MR. LONGFELLOW, MR. WILLIS, AND THE DRAMA. 



To please a devil that inhabits him — 
in fact, to mortify the pride of the nobility, and avenge himself 
of their scorn. He therefore bargains with Falcone [a narrow- 
souled villain] for the hand of Isabella. The deed of the Falcone 
property is restored to the Count, upon an agreement that the 
lady shall marry the usurer — this contract being invalid should 
Falcone change his mind in regard to the marriage, or should the 
maiden demur — but valid should the wedding be prevented 
through any fault of Tortesa, or through any accident not. spring- 
ing from the will of the father or child. The first scene makes 
us aware of this bargain, and introduces us to Zippa, a glover's 
daughter, who resolves, with a view of befriending Isabella, to 
feign a love for Tortesa, [which, in fact, she partially feels,] hoping 
thus to break off the match. 

The second scene makes us acquainted with a young painter, 
(Angelo,) poor, but of high talents and ambition, and with his 
servant, (Tomaso,) an old bottle-loving rascal, entertaining no very 
exalted opinion of his master's abilities. Tomaso does some 
injury to a picture, and Angelo is about to run him through the 
body, when he is interrupted by a sudden visit from the Duke of 
Florence, attended by Falcone. The Duke is enraged at the mur- 
derous attempt, but admires the paintings in the studio. Finding 
that the rage of the great man will prevent his patronage if he 
knows the aggressor as the artist, Angelo passes off Tomaso as 
himself, (Angelo,) making an exchange of names. This is a point 
of some importance, as it introduces the true Angelo to a job 
which he had long coveted — the painting of the portrait of Isa- 
bella, of whose beauty he had become enamored through report. 
The Duke wishes the portrait painted. Falcone, however, on 
account of a promise to Tortesa, would have objected to admit to 
his daughter's presence the handsome Angelo, but in regard to 
Tomaso, has no scruple. Supposing Tomaso to be Angelo and 
the artist, the count writes a note to Isabella, requiring her "to 
admit the painter Angelo." The real Angelo is thus admitted. 
He and the lady love at first sight, (much in the manner of Romeo 
and Juliet,) each ignorant of the other's attachment. 

The third scene of the second act is occupied with a conversa- 
tion between Falcone and Tortesa, during which a letter arrives 



MR. LONGFELLOW, MR. WILLIS, AND THE DRAMA. 339 

from the Duke, who, having heard of the intended sacrifice of 
Isabella, offers to redeem the Count's lands and palace, and desires 
him to preserve his daughter for a certain Count Julian. But 
Isabella, — who, before seeing Angelo, had been willing to sacrifice 
herself for her father's sake, and who, since seeing him, had en- 
tertained hopes of escaping the hateful match through means of a 
plot entered into by herself and Zippa — Isabella, we say, is now in 
despair. To gain time, she at once feigns a love for the usurer, 
and indignantly rejects the proposal of the Duke. The hour for 
the wedding draws near. The lady has prepared a sleeping potion, 
whose effects resemble those of death. (Romeo and Juliet.) She 
swallows it — knowing that her supposed corpse would lie at night, 
pursuant to an old custom, in the sanctuary of the cathedral ; and 
believing that Angelo — whose love for herself she has elicited, by 
a stratagem, from his own lips — will watch by the body, in the 
strength of his devotion. Her ultimate design (we may suppose, 
for it is not told,) is to confess all to her lover, on her revival, and 
throw herself upon his protection — their marriage being conceal- 
ed, and herself regarded as dead by the world. Zippa, who really 
loves Angelo — (her love for Tortesa, it must be understood, is a 
very equivocal feeling, for the fact cannot be denied that Mr. Willis 
makes her love both at the same time) — Zippa, who really loves 
Angelo — who has discovered his passion for Isabella — and who, as 
well as that lady, believes that the painter will watch the corpse in 
the cathedral, — determines, through jealousy, to prevent his so 
doing, and with this view informs Tortesa that she has learned it 
to be Angelo's design to steal the body, for artistical purposes, — 
in short as a model to be used in his studio. The usurer, in con- 
sequence, sets a guard at the doors of the cathedral. This guard 
does, in fact, prevent the lover from watching the corpse, but, it 
appears, does not prevent the lady, on her revival and disappoint- 
ment in not seeing the one she sought, from passing unperceived 
from the church. Weakened by her long sleep, she wanders 
aimlessly through the streets, and at length finds herself, when 
just sinking with exhaustion, at the door of her father. She has 
no resourse but to knock. The Count, who here, we must say, 
acts very much as Thimble of old — the knight, we mean, of the 
" scolding wife " — maintains that she is dead, and shuts the door 



340 MR. LONGFELLOW, MR. WILLIS, AND THE DRAMA. 

in her face. In other words, he supposes it to be the ghost of his 
daughter who speaks ; and so the lady is left to perish on the 
steps. Meantime Angelo is absent from fcome, attempting to get 
access to the cathedral ; and his servant Tom aso, takes the oppor- 
tunity of absenting himself also, and of indulging his bibulous 
propensities while perambulating the town. He finds Isabella as 
we left her ; and through motives which we will leave Mr. Willis 
to explain, conducts her unresistingly to Angelo's residence, and 
— deposits her in Angelo's bed. The artist now returns — Tomaso 
is kicked out of doors — and we are not told, but left to presume, 
that a full explanation and perfect understanding are brought 
about between the lady and her lover. 

We find them, next morning, in the studio, where stands lean- 
ing against an easel, the portrait (a full length) of Isabella, with 
curtains adjusted before it. The stage-directions, moreover, in- 
form us that " the back wall of the room is such as to form a 
natural ground for the picture." While Angelo is occupied in 
retouching it, he is interrupted by the arrival of Tortesa with a 
guard, and is accused of having stolen the corpse from the sanc- 
tuary — the lady, meanwhile, having stepped behind the curtain. 
The usurer insists upon seeing the painting, with a view of ascer- 
taining whether any new touches had been put upon it, which 
would argue an examination, post mortem, of those charms of 
neck and bosom which the living Isabella would not have unveil- 
ed. Resistance is vain — the curtain is torn down ; but to the 
surprise of Angelo, the lady herself is discovered, " with her 
hands crossed on her breast, and her eyes fixed on the ground, 
standing motionless in the frame which had contained the picture." 
The tableau, we are to believe, deceives Tortesa, who steps back 
to contemplate what he supposes to be the portrait of his betroth- 
ed. In the meantime the guards, having searched the house, find 
the veil which had been thrown over the imagined corpse in the 
sanctuary ; and, upon this evidence, the artist is carried before the 
Duke. Here he is accused, not only of sacrilege, but of the mur- 
der of Isabella, and is about to be condemned to death, when his 
mistress comes forward in person ; thus resigning herself to the 
usurer to save the life of her lover. But the nobler nature of 
Tortesa now breaks forth ; and, smitten with admiration of the 



MR. LONGFELLOW, MR. WILLIS, AND THE DRAMA. 341 

lady's conduct, as well as convinced that her love for himself was 
feigned, he resigns her to Angelo — although now feeling and 
acknowledging for the first time that a fervent love has, in his 
own bosom, assumed the place of this misanthropic ambition 
which, hitherto, had alone actuated him in seeking her hand. 
Moreover, lie endows Isabella with the lands of her father Falcone. 
The lovers are thus made happy. The usurer weds Zippa ; and 
the curtain drops upon the promise of the Duke to honor the 
double nuptials with his presence. 

This story, as we have given it, hangs better together (Mr. Willis 
will pardon our modesty) and is altogether more easily compre- 
hended, than in the words of the play itself. We have really put 
the best face upon the matter, and presented the whole in the 
simplest and clearest light in our power. We mean to say that 
" Tortesa" (partaking largely, in this respect, of the drama of 
Cervantes and Calderon) is over-clouded — rendered misty — by a 
world of unnecessary and impertinent intrigue. This folly was 
adopted by the Spanish comedy, and is imitated by us, with the 
idea of imparting -" action," "business," "vivacity." But viva- 
city, however desirable, can be attained in many other ways, and 
is dearly purchased, indeed, when the price is intelligibility. 

The truth is that cant has never attained a more owl-like dig- 
nity than in the discussion of dramatic principle. A modern 
stage critic is nothing, if not a lofty contemner of all things sim- 
ple and direct. He delights in mystery — revels in mystification 
— has transcendental notions concerning P. S. and O. P., and 
talks about " stage business and stage effect," as if he were dis- 
cussing the differential calculus. For much of all this, we are 
indebted to the somewhat over-profound criticisms of Augustus 
William Schlegel. 

But the dicta of common sense are of universal application, 
and, touching this matter of intrigue, if, from its superabundance, 
we are compelled, even in the quiet and critical perusal of a play, 
to pause frequently and reflect long — to re-read passages over and 
over again, for the purpose of gathering their bearing upon the 
whole — of maintaining in our mind a general connexion — what 
but fatigue can result from the exertion ? How then when we 
come to the representation ? — when these passages — trifling, per- 



342 MR. LONGFELLOW, MR. WILLIS, AND THE DRAMA. 

haps, in themselves, but important when considered in relation to 
the plot — are hurried and blurred over in the stuttering- enunci- 
ation of some miserable rantipole, or omitted altogether through 
the constitutional lapse of memory so peculiar to those lights of 
the age and stage, bedight (from being of no conceivable use) su- 
pernumeraries ? For it must be borne in mind that these bits of 
intrigue (we use the term in the sense of the German critics) 
appertain generally, indeed altogether, to the after-thoughts of 
the drama — to the underplots — are met with, consequently, in 
the mouth of the lacquies and chamber-maids — and are thus con- 
signed to the tender mercies of the stellce minores. Of course we 
get but an imperfect idea of what is going on before our eyes. 
Action after action ensues whose mystery we cannot unlock with- 
out the little key which these barbarians have thrown away and 
lost. Our weariness increases in proportion to the number of 
these embarrassments, and if the play escape damnation at all, it 
escapes in spite of that intrigue to which, in nine cases out of ten, 
the author attributes his success, and which he xoill persist in 
valuing exactly in proportion to the misapplied labor it has cost 
him. 

But dramas of this kind are said, in our customary parlance, to 
" abound in plot." We have never yet met any one, however, 
who could tell us what precise ideas he connected with the phrase. 
A mere succession of incidents, even the most spirited, will no 
more constitute a plot, than a multiplication of zeros, even the 
most infinite, will result in the production of a unit. This all will 
admit — but few trouble themselves to think farther. The com- 
mon notion seems to be in favor of mere complexity; but a plot, 
properly understood, is perfect only inasmuch as we shall find 
ourselves unable to detach from it or disarrange any single inci- 
dent involved, without destruction to the mass. This we say is 
the point of perfection — a point never yet attained, but not on 
that account unattainable. Practically, we may consider a plot 
as of high excellence, when no one of its component parts shall be 
susceptible of removal without detriment to the whole. Here, in- 
deed, is a vast lowering of the demand — and with less than this 
no writer of refined taste should content himself. 

As this subject is not only in itself of great importance, but 



MR. LONGFELLOW, MR. WILLIS, AND THE DRAMA. 343 

will have at all points a bearing upon what we shall say hereafter, 
in the examination of various plays, we shall be pardoned for 
quoting from the "Democratic Review" some passages (of our 
own) which enter more particularly into the rationale of the sub- 
ject: 

" All the Bridge water treatises have failed in noticing the great 
idiosyncrasy in the Divine system of adaptation : — that idiosyn- 
crasy which stamps the adaptation as divine, in distinction from 
that which is the work of merely human constructiveness. I 
speak of the complete mutuality of adaptation. For example : — 
in human constructions, a particular cause has a particular effect 
— a particular purpose brings about a particular object ; but we 
see no reciprocity. The effect does not re-act upon the cause — 
the object does not change relations with the purpose. In Divine 
constructions, the object is either object or purpose as we choose 
to regard it, while the purpose is either purpose or object ; so that 
we can never (abstractly — without concretion — without reference 
to facts of the moment) decide which is which. 

" For secondary example: — In polar climates, the human frame, 
to maintain its animal heat, requires, for combustion in the capil- 
lary system, an abundant supply of highly azotized food, such as 
train oil. Again : — in polar climates nearly the sole food afforded 
man is the oil of abundant seals and whales. JSTow whether is 
oil at hand because imperatively demanded? or whether is it the 
only thing demanded because the only thing to be obtained? It 
is impossible to say : — there is an absolute reciprocity of adaptation 
for which we seek in vain among the works of man. 

" The Bridgewater tractists may have avoided this point, on 
account of its apparent tendency to overthrow the idea of cause 
in general — consequently of a First Cause — of God. But it is 
more probable that they have failed to perceive what no one pre- 
ceding them has, to my knowledge, perceived. 

" The pleasure which we derive from any exertion of human 
ingenuity, is in the direct ratio of the approach to this species of 
reciprocity between cause and effect. In the construction of plot, 
for example, in fictitious literature, we should aim at so arranging 
the points, or incidents, that we cannot distinctly see, in respect 
to any one of them, whether that one depends from any one other 



344 MR. LONGFELLOW, MR. WILLIS, AND THE DRAMA. 

or upholds it. In this sense, of course, perfection of plot is unat- 
tainable in fact — because Man is the constructor. The plots of 
God are perfect. The Universe is a plot of God." 

The pleasure derived from the contemplation of the unity re- 
sulting from plot, is far more intense than is ordinarily supposed, 
and, as in Nature we meet with no such combination of incident, 
appertains to a very lofty region of the ideal. In speaking thus 
we have not said that plot is more than an adjunct to the drama 
— more than a perfectly distinct and separable source of pleasure. 
It is not an essential. In its intense artificiality it may even be 
conceived injurious in a certain degree (unless constructed with 
consummate skill) to that real life-likeness which is the soul of 
the drama of character. Good dramas have been written with 
very little plot — capital dramas might be written with none at all. 
Some plays of high merit, having plot, abound in irrelevant inci- 
dent — in incident, we mean, which could be displaced or removed 
altogether without effect upon the plot itself, and yet are by no 
means objectionable as dramas; and for this reason — that the 
incidents are evidently irrelevant — obviously episodical. Of their 
digressive nature the spectator is so immediately aware, that he 
views them, as they arise, in the simple light of interlude, and 
does not fatigue his attention by attempting to establish for them 
a connexion, or more than an illustrative connexion, with the 
great interests of the subject. Such are the plays of Shakspeare. 
But all this is very different from that irrelevancy of intrigue 
which disfigures and very usually damns the work of the unskil- 
ful artist. With him the great error lies in inconsequence. Un- 
derplot is piled upon underplot, (the very word is a paradox,) 
and all to no purpose — to no end. The interposed incidents have 
no ultimate effect upon the main ones. They may hang upon 
the mass — they may even coalesce with it, or, as in some intri- 
cate cases, they may be so intimately blended as to be lost amid 
the chaos which they have been instrumental in bringing about — 
but still they have no portion in the plot, which exits, if at all, 
independently of their influence. Yet the attempt is made by the 
author to establish and demonstrate a dependence — an identity; 
and it is the obviousness of this attempt which is the cause of 
weariness in the spectator, who, of course, cannot at once see that 



MR. LONGFELLOW, MR. WILLIS, AND THE DRAMA. 345 

his attention is challenged to no purpose — that intrigues so ob- 
trusively forced upon it, are to be found, in the end, without effect 
upon the leading interests of the play. 

" Tortesa" will afford us plentiful examples of this irrelevancy 
of intrigue — of this misconception of the nature and of the capa- 
cities of plot. We have said that our digest of the story is more 
easy of comprehension than the detail of Mr. Willis. If so, it is 
because we have forborne to give such portions as had no influence 
upon the whole. These served but to embarrass the narrative and 
fatigue the attention. How much was irrelevant is shown by the 
brevity of the space in which we have recorded, somewhat at 
length, all the influential incidents of a drama of five acts. There 
is scarcely a scene in which is not to be found the germ of an un- 
derplot — a germ, however, which seldom proceeds beyond the 
condition of a bud, or, if so fortunate as to swell into a flower, 
arrives, in no single instance, at the dignity of fruit. Zippa, a 
lady altogether without character (dramatic) is the most pertina- 
cious of all conceivable concoctors of plans never to be matured 
— of vast designs that terminate in nothing — of cul-de-sac machi- 
nations. She plots in one page and counterplots in the next. 
She schemes her way from P. S. to 0. P., and intrigues persever- 
ingly from the footlights to the slips. A very singular instance of 
the inconsequence of her manoeuvres is found towards the con- 
clusion of the play. The whole of the second scene, (occupying 
five pages,) in the fifth act, is obviously introduced for the pur- 
pose of giving her information, through Tomaso's means, of An- 
gelo's arrest for the murder of Isabella. Upon learning his dan- 
ger she rushes from the stage, to be present at the trial, exclaiming 
that her evidence can save his life. We, the audience, of course 
applaud, and now look with interest to her movements in the 
scene of the judgment hall. She, Zippa, we think, is somebody 
after all ; she will be the means of Angelo's salvation ; she will 
thus be the chief unraveller of the plot. All eyes are bent, there- 
fore, upon Zippa — but alas, upon the point at issue, Zippa does 
not so much as open her mouth. It is scarcely too much to say 
that not a single action of this impertinent little busybody has any 
real influence upon the play ; — yet she appears upon every occa- 
sion — appearing only to perplex. 

15* 



346 MR. LONGFELLOW, MR. WILLIS, AND THE DRAMA. 

Similar things abound ; we should not have space even to allude 
to them all. The whole conclusion of the play is supererogatory. 
The immensity of pure fuss with which it is overloaded, forces us 
to the reflection that all of it might have been avoided by one 
word of explanation to the duke — an amiable man who admires 
the talents of Angelo, and who, to prevent Isabella's marrying 
against her will, had previously offered to free Falcone of his 
bonds to the usurer. That he would free him now, and thus set 
all matters straight, the spectator cannot doubt for an instant, and 
he can conceive no better reason why explanations are not made, 
than that Mr. Willis does not think proper they should be. In 
fact, the whole drama is exceedingly ill motivirt. 

We have already mentioned an inadvertence, in the fourth act, 
where Isabella is made to escape from the sanctuary through the 
midst of guards who prevented the ingress of Angelo. Another 
occurs where Falcone's conscience is made to reprove him, upon 
the appearance of his daughter's supposed ghost, for having 
occasioned her death by forcing her to marry against her will. 
The author had forgotten that Falcone submitted to the wedding, 
after the duke's interposition, only upon Isabella's assurance that 
she really loved the usurer. In the third scene, too, of the first act, 
the imagination of the spectator is no doubt a little taxed, when he 
finds Angelo, in the first moment of his introduction to the palace 
of Isabella, commencing her portrait by laying on color after 
color, before he has made any attempt at an outline. In the last 
act, moreover, Tortesa gives to Isabella a deed 
Of the Falcone palaces and lands, 
And all the money forfeit by Falcone. 

This' is a terrible blunder, and the more important as upon this 
act of the usurer depends the development of his new-born 
sentiments of honor and virtue — depends, in fact, the most salient 
point of the play. Tortesa, we say, gives to Isabella the lands 
forfeited by Falcone ; but Tortesa was surely not very generous 
in giving what, clearly, was not his own to give. Falcone had 
not forfeited the deed, which had been restored to him by the 
usurer, and which was then in his (Falcone's) possession. Hear 
Tortesa : 

He put it in the bond, 
That if, by any humor of my own, 



MR. LONGFELLOW, MR. WILLIS, AND THE DRAMA. 347 

Or acident that came not from himself, 

Or from his daughter's will, the match were marred, 

His tenure stood intact. 

Now Falcone is still resolute for the match; but this new 
generous " humor " of Tortesa induces him (Tortesa) to decline 
it. Falcone's tenure is then intact ; he retains the deed, the 
usurer is giving away property not his own. 

As a drama of character, " Tortesa " is by no means open to 
so many objections as when we view it in the light of its plot ; but 
it is still faulty. The merits are so exceedingly negative, that it 
is difficult to say anything about them. The Duke is nobody ; 
Falcone, nothing; Zippa, less than nothing. Angelo may be 
regarded simply as the medium through which Mr. Willis conveys 
to the reader his own glowing feelings — his own refined and deli- 
cate fancy — (delicate, yet bold) — his own rich voluptuousness of 
sentiment — a voluptuousness which would offend in almost any 
other language than that in which it is so skilfully apparelled. 
Isabella is — the heroine of the Hunchback. The revolution in the 
character of Tortesa — or rather the final triumph of his innate 
virtue — is a dramatic point far older than the hills. It may be 
observed, too, that although the representation of no human 
character should be quarrelled with for its inconsistency, we yet 
require that the inconsistencies be not absolute antagonisms to the 
extent of neutralization : they may be permitted to be oils and 
waters, but they must not be alkalies and acids. When, in the 
course of the denouement, the usurer bursts forth into an eloquence 
virtue-inspired, we canmot sympathize very heartily in his fine 
speeches, since they proceed from the mouth of the self-same 
egotist who, urged by a disgusting vanity, uttered so many 
sotticisms (about his fine legs, &c.) in the earlier passages of the 
play. Tomaso is, upon the whole, the best personage. We 
recognise some originality in his conception, and conception was 
seldom more admirably carried out. 

One or two observations at random. In the third scene of the 

fifth act, Tomaso, the buffoon, is made to assume paternal 

authority over Isabella, (as usual, without sufficient purpose,) by 

virtue of a law which Tortesa thus expounds : 

My gracious liege, there is a law in Florence, 
That if a farther, for no guilt or shame, 



348 MR. LONGFELLOW, MR. WILLIS, AND THE DRAMA. 

Disown and shut his door upon his daughter, 
She is the child of him who succors her, 
Who by the shelter of a single night, 
Becomes endowed with the authority 
Lost by the other. 

No one, of course, can be made to believe that any such stupid 
law as this ever existed either in Florence or Timbuctoo ; but, on 
the ground que le vrai riest pas toujours le vraisemblable, we say 
that even its real existence would be no justification of Mr. Willis. 
It has an air of the far-fetched — of the desperate — which a fine 
taste will avoid as a pestilence. Very much of the same nature 
is the attempt of Tortesa to extort a second bond from Falcone. 
The evidence which convicts Angelo of murder is ridiculously 
frail. The idea of Isabella's assuming the place of the portrait, 
and so deceiving the usurer, is not only glaringly improbable, but 
seems adopted from the "Winter's Tale." But in this latter play, 
the deception is at least possible, for the human figure but 
imitates a statue. What, however, are we to make of Mr. W's 
stage direction about the back wall's being " so arranged as to 
form a natural ground for the picture ?" Of course, the very 
slightest movement of Tortesa (and he makes many) would have 
annihilated the illusion by disarranging the perspective; and in 
no manner could this latter have been arranged at all for more 
than one particular point of view — in other words, for more than 
one particular person in the whole audience. The " asides/' 
moreover, are unjustifiably frequent. The prevalence of this 
folly (of speaking aside) detracts as much from the acting merit 
of our drama generally, as any other inartisticality. It utterly 
destroys verisimilitude. People are not in the habit of soliloqui- 
zing aloud — at least, not to any positive extent; and why should 
an author have to be told, what the slightest reflection would 
teach him, that an audience, by dint of no imagination, can or 
will conceive that what is sonorous in their own ears at the 
distance of fifty feet, cannot be heard by an actor at the distance 
of one or two ? 

Having spoken thus of "Tortesa" in terms of nearly unmiti- 
gated censure — our readers may be surprised to hear us say that 
we think highly of the drama as a whole — and have little hesita- 
tion in ranking it before most of the dramas of Sheridan Knowles. 



MR. LONGFELLOW, MR. WILLIS, AND THE DRAMA. 349 

Its leading faults are those of the modern drama generally — they 
are not peculiar to itself — while its great merits are. If in sup- 
port of our opinion, we do not cite points of commendation, it is 
because those form the mass of the work. And were we to speak 
of fine passages, we should srjeak of the entire play. Nor by 
"fine passages" do we mean passages of merely fine language, 
embodying fine sentiment, but such as are replete with truthful- 
ness, and teem with the loftiest qualities of the dramatic art. 
Points — capital points abound ; and these have far more to do 
with the general excellence of a play, than a too speculative criti- 
cism has been willing to admit. Upon the whole, we are proud 
of "Tortesa" — and here again, for the fiftieth time at least, re- 
cord our warm admiration of the abilities of Mr. "Willis. 
We proceed now to Mr. Longfellow's 

SPANISH STUDENT. 

The reputation of its author as a poet, and as a graceful writer 
of prose, is, of course, long and deservedly established — but as a 
dramatist he was unknown before the publication of this play. 
Upon its original appearance, in "Graham's Magazine," the gen- 
eral opinion was greatly in favor— if not exactly of " The Spanish 
Student" — at all events of the writer of Outre-Mer. But this 
general opinion is the most equivocal thing in the world. It is 
never self-formed. It has very seldom indeed an original develop- 
ment. In regard to the work of an already famous or infamous 
author it decides, to be sure, with a laudable promptitude ; making 
up all the mind that it has, by reference to the reception of the 
author's immediately previous publication ; — making up thus the 
ghost of a mind pro tern. — a species of critical shadow, that fully 
answers, nevertheless, all the purposes of a substance itself, until 
the substance itself shall be forthcoming. But, beyond this point, 
the general opinion can only be considered that of the public, as 
a man may call a book his, having bought it. When a new 
writer arises, the shop of the true, thoughtful, or critical opinion, 
is not simultaneously thrown away — is not immediately set up. 
Some weeks elapse ; and, during this interval, the public, at a loss 
where to procure an opinion of the debutante, have necessarily no 
opinion of him at all, for the nonce. 

The popular voice, then, which ran so much in favor of " The 



350 MR. LONGFELLOW, MR. WILLIS, AND THE DRAMA. 

Spanish Student," upon its original issue, should be looked upon 
as merely the ghost pro tern. — as based upon critical decisions re- 
specting the previous works of the author — as having reference in 
no manner to "The Spanish Student" itself — and thus as utterly- 
meaningless and valueless per se. 

The few — by which we mean those who think, in contradistinc- 
tion from the many who think they think — the few who think at 
first hand, and thus twice before speaking at all — these received 
the play with a commendation somewhat less prononcee — some- 
what more guardedly qualified — than Professor Longfellow might 
have desired, or may have been taught to expect. Still the com- 
position was approved upon the whole. The few words of censure 
were very far, indeed, from amounting to condemnation. The 
chief defect insisted upon, was the feebleness of the denouement, 
and, generally, of the concluding scenes, as compared with the 
opening passages. We are not sure, however, that anything like 
detailed criticism has been attempted in the case — nor do we pro- 
pose now to attempt it. Nevertheless, the work has interest, not 
only within itself, but as the first dramatic effort of an author who 
has remarkably succeeded in almost every other department of 
light literature than that of the drama. It may be as well, there- 
fore, to speak of it, if not analytically, at least somewhat in de- 
tail ; and we cannot, perhaps, more suitably commence than by a 
quotation, without comment, of some of the finer passages : 

And, though she is a virgin outwardly, 
Within she is a sinner ; like those panels 
Of doors and altar-pieces the old monks 
Painted in convents, with the Virgin Mary 
On the outside, and on the inside Venus 

I believe 
That woman, in her deepest degradation, 
Holds something sacred, something undefiled, 
Some pledge and keepsake of her higher nature, 
And, like the diamond in the dark, retains 
Some quenchless gleam of the celestial light. . . . 

And we shall sit together unmolested, 

And words of true love pass from tongue to tongue, 

As singing birds from one bough to another. . . . 

Our feelings and our thoughts 
Tend ever on and rest not in the Present. 
As drops of rain fall into some dark well, 
And from below comes a scarce audible sound, 



MR. LONGFELLOW, MR. WILLIS, AND THE DRAMA. 351 

So fall our thoughts into the dark Hereafter, 
And their mysterious echo reaches us. . . . 

Her tender limbs are still, and, on her breast, 
The cross she prayed to, ere she fell asleep, 
Rises or falls with the soft tide of dreams, 
Like a light barge safe moored. . . . 

Hark ! how the large and ponderous mace of Time 
Knocks at the golden portals of the day ! . . . . 

The lady Violante, bathed in tears 
Of love and anger, like the maid of Colchis, 
Whom thou, another faithless Argonaut, 
Having won that golden fleece, a woman's love, 
Desertest for this Glauce. . . . 

I read or sit in reverie and watch 

The changing color of the waves that break 

Upon the idle sea-shore of the mind 

I will forget her. All dear recollections 
Pressed in my heart, like flowers within a book, 
Shall be torn out and scattered to the winds.. . . 

O yes ! I see it now — 
Yet rather with my heart than with mine eyes, 
So faint it is. And all my thoughts sail thither, 
Freighted with prayers and hopes, and forward urged 
Against all stress of accident, as, in 
The Eastern Tale, against the wind and tide 
Great ships were drawn to the Magnetic Mountains 

But there are brighter dreams than those of Fame, 

Which are the dreams of Love ! Out of the heart 

Rises the bright ideal of these dreams, 

As from some woodland fount a spirit rises 

And sinks again into its silent deeps, 

Ere the enamored knight can touch her robe ! 

'Tis this ideal that the soul of Man, 

Like the enamored knight beside the fountain, 

Waits for upon the margin of Life's stream ; 

Waits to behold her rise from the dark waters, 

Clad in a mortal shape ! Alas, how many 

Must wait in vain ! The stream flows evermore, 

But from its silent deeps no spirit rises ! 

Yet I, born under a propitious star, 

Have found the bright ideal of my dreams 

Yes ; by the Darro's side 
My childhood passed. I can remember still 
The river, and the mountains capped with snow ; 
The villages where, yet a little child, 
I told the traveller's fortune in the street ; 
The smuggler's horse ; the brigand and the shepherd ; 
The march across the moor ; the halt at noon ; 
The red fire of the evening camp, that lighted 
The forest where we slept ; and, farther back, 



352 MR LONGFELLOW, MR. WILLIS, AND THE DRAMA. 

As in a dream, or in some former life, 
Gardens and palace walls 

This path will lead us to it, 
Over the wheat -fields, where the shadows sail 
Across the running sea, now green, now blue, 
And, like an idle mariner on the ocean, 
Whistles the quail 

These extracts will be universally admired. They are graceful, 
well expressed, imaginative, and altogether replete with the true 
poetic feeling. We quote them now, at the beginning of our re- 
view, by way of justice to the poet, and because, in what follows, 
we are not sure that we have more than a very few words of what 
may be termed commendation to bestow. 

The " Spanish Student " has an unfortunate beginning, in a 
most unpardonable, and yet, to render the matter worse, in a 
most indispensable " Preface :" 

The subject of the following play, [says Mr. L.,] is taken in part from 
the beautiful play of Cervantes, La Gitanilla. To this source, however, I 
am indebted for the main incident only, the love of a Spanish student for a 
Gipsy girl, and the name of the heroine, Preciosa. I have not followed the 
story in any of its details. In Spain this subject has been twice handled 
dramatically ; first by Juan Perez de Montalvan, in La Gitanilla, and after- 
wards by Antonio de Solis y Rivadeneira in La Gitanilla de Madrid. The 
same subject has also been made use of by Thomas Middleton, an English 
dramatist of the seventeenth century. His play is called The Spanish 
Gipsy. The main plot is the same as in the Spanish pieces ; but there runs 
through it a tragic underplot of the loves of Rodrigo and Dona Clara, which 
is taken from another tale of Cervantes, La Fuerza de la Sangre. The 
reader who is acquainted with La Gitanilla of Cervantes, and the plays of 
Montalvan, Solis, and Middleton, will perceive that my treatment of the 
subject differs entirely from theirs. 

Now the autorial originality, properly considered, is threefold. 
There is, first, the originality of the general thesis ; secondly, that 
of the several incidents, or thoughts, by which the thesis is devel- 
oped ; and, thirdly, that of manner, or tone, by which means alone, 
an old subject, even when developed through hackneyed incidents, 
or thoughts, may be made to produce a fully original effect — 
which, after all, is the end truly in view. 

But originality, as it is one of the highest, is also one of the 
rarest of merits. In America it is especially, and very remarka- 
bly rare : — this through causes sufficiently well understood. We 
are content per force, therefore, as a general thing, with either of 
the lower branches of originality mentioned above, and would re- 



MR, LONGFELLOW, MR. WILLIS, AND THE DRAMA. 353 

gard with high favor, indeed, any author who should supply the 
great desideratum in combining the three. Still the three should 
be combined ; and from whom, if not fromsuch men as Professor 
Longfellow — if not from those who occupy the chief niches in our 
Literary Temple — shall we expect the combination ? But in the 
present instance, what has Professor Long-fellow accomplished ? Is 
he original at any one point ? Is he original in respect to the first 
and most important of our three divisions ? " The subject of the 
following play," he says himself, " is taken in part from the 
beautiful play of Cervantes, La Gitanilla." " To this source, how- 
ever, I am indebted for the main incident only, the love of the 
Spanish student for a Gipsy girl, and the name of the heroine, 
Preciosa." 

The italics are our own, and the words italicized involve an ob- 
vious contradiction. We cannot understand how " the love of 
the Spanish student for the Gipsy girl" can be called an "inci- 
dent," or even a " main incident," at all. In fact, this love — this 
discordant and therefore eventful or incidentful love — is the true 
thesis of the drama of Cervantes. It is this anomalous "love" 
which originates the incidents .by means of which, itself, this 
"love," the thesis, is developed. Having based his play, then, 
upon this " love," we cannot admit his claim to originality upon 
our first count ; nor has he any right to say that he has adopted 
his "subject" "in part." It is clear that he has adopted it alto- 
gether. Nor would he have been entitled to claim originality of 
subject, even had he based his story upon any variety of love 
arising between parties naturally separated by prejudices of caste — 
such, for example, as those which divide the Brahmin from the 
Pariah, the Ammonite from the African, or even the Christian 
from the Jew. For here in its ultimate analysis, is the real thesis 
of the Spaniard. But when the drama is founded, not merely 
upon this general thesis, but upon this general thesis in the iden- 
tical application given it by Cervantes — that is to say, upon the 
prejudice of caste exemplified in the case of a Catholic, and this 
Catholic a Spaniard, and this Spaniard a student, and this stu- 
dent loving a Gipsy, and this Gipsy a dancing-girl, and this danc- 
ing-girl bearing the name Preciosa — we are not altogether pre- 
pared to be informed by Professor Longfellow that he is indebted 



354 MR. LONGFELLOW, MR. WILLIS, AND THE DRAMA. 

for an " incident only" to the " beautiful Gitanilla of Cervan- 
tes." 

Whether our author is original upon our second and third 
points — in the true incidents of his story, or in the manner and 
tone of their handling — will be more distinctly seen as we 
proceed. 

It is to be regretted that " The Spanish Student" was not sub- 
entitled " A Dramatic Poem," rather than " A Play." The for- 
mer title would have more fully conveyed the intention of the 
poet ; for, of course, we shall not do Mr. Longfellow the injustice 
to suppose that his design has been, in any respect, a play, in the 
ordinary acceptation of the term. Whatever may be its merits in 
a merely poetical view, " The Spanish Student" could not be en- 
dured upon the stage. 

Its plot runs thus : — Preciosa, the daughter of a Spanish gen- 
tleman, is stolen, while an infant, by Gipsies ; brought up as his 
own daughter, and as a dancing-girl, by a Gipsy leader, Crusado ; 
and by him betrothed to a young Gipsy, Bartolome. At Madrid, 
Preciosa loves and is beloved by Victorian, a student of Alcalda, 
who resolves to marry her, notwithstanding her caste, rumors in- 
volving her purity, the dissuasions of his friends, and his betrothal 
to an heiress of Madrid. Preciosa is also sought by the Count of 
Lara, a roue. She rejects him. He forces his way into her 
chamber, and is there seen by Victorian, who, misinterpreting 
some words overheard, doubts the fidelity of his mistress, and 
leaves her in anger, after challenging the Count of Lara. In the 
duel, the Count receives his life at the hands of Victorian ; de- 
clares his ignorance of the understanding between Victorian and 
Preciosa ; boasts of favors received from the latter ; and, to make 
good his words, produces a ring which she gave him, he asserts, 
as a pledge of her love. This ring is a duplicate of one previous- 
ly given the girl by Victorian, and known to have been so given, 
by the Count. Victorian mistakes it for his own, believes all that 
has been said, and abandons the field to his rival, who, immedi- 
ately afterwards, while attempting to procure access to the Gipsy, 
is assassinated by Bartolome. Meanwhile, Victorian, wandering 
through the country, reaches Guadarrama. Here he receives a 
letter from Madrid, disclosing the treachery practised by Lara, 



MR. LONGFELLOW, MR. WILLIS, AND THE DRAMA. 355 

and telling that Preciosa, rejecting his addresses, had been, 
through his instrumentality hissed from the stage, and now again 
roamed with the Gipsies. He goes in search of her ; finds her in 
a wood near Guadarrama ; approaches her, disguising his voice ; 
she recognises him, pretending she does not, and unaware that he 
knows her innocence ; a conversation of equivoque ensues ; he 
sees his ring upon her ringer ; offers to purchase it ; she refuses 
to part with it ; a full eclaircissement takes places ; at this junc- 
ture, a servant of Victorian's arrives with " news from court," 
giving the first intimation of the true parentage of Preciosa. The 
lovers set out, forthwith, for Madrid, to see the newly-discovered 
father. On the route, Bartolome dogs their steps ; fires at Pre- 
ciosa; misses her; the shot is returned; he falls; and "The 
Spanish Student" is concluded. 

This plot, however, like that of " Tortesa," looks better in our 
naked digest than amidst the details which develope only to dis- 
figure it. The reader of the play itself will be astonished, when 
he remembers the name of the author, at the inconsequence of the 
incidents — at the utter want of skill — of art — manifested in their 
conception and introduction. In dramatic writing, no principle is 
more clear than that nothing should be said or done which has 
not a tendency to develope the catastrophe, or the characters. But 
Mr. Longfellow's play abounds in events and conversations that 
have no ostensible purpose, and certainly answer no end. In what 
light, for example, since we cannot suppose this drama intended 
for the stage, are we to regard the second scene of the second act, 
where a long dialogue between an Archbishop and a Cardinal is 
wound up by a dance from Preciosa ? The Pope thinks of abol- 
ishing public dances in Spain, and the priests in question have 
been delegated to examine, personally, the proprieties or impro- 
prieties of such exhibitions. With this view, Preciosa is sum- 
moned and required to give a specimen of her skill. Now this, 
in a mere spectacle, would do very well ; for here all that is 
demanded is an occasion or an excuse for a dance ; but what 
business has it in a pure drama ? or in what regard does it fur- 
ther the end of a dramatic poem, intended only to be read? In 
the same manner, the whole of scene the eighth, in the same act, 
is occupied with six lines of stage directions, as follows : 



356 MR. LONGFELLOW, MR. WILLIS, AND THE DRAMA. 

T?ie Tlieatre. The orchestra plays the Cachuca. Sound of castanets behind 
the scenes. The curtain rises and discovers Preciosa in the attitude of 
commencing the dance. The Cachuca. Tumult. Hisses. Cries of Brava ! 
and Aguera ! She falters and pauses. The music stops. General confu- 
sion. Preciosa faints. 

But the inconsequence of which we complain will be best exem- 
plified by an entire scene. We take scene the fourth, act the first : 
An inn on the road to Alcald. Baltasar asleep on a bench. Enter Chispa. 

Chispa. And here we are, half way to Alcala, between cocks and mid- 
night. Body o' me ! what an inn this is ! The light out and the landlord 
asleep ! Hola ! ancient Baltasar ! 

Baltasar [waking]. Here I am. 

Chispa. Yes, there you are, like a one-eyed alcade in a town without in- 
habitants. Bring a light, and let me have supper. 

Baltasar. Where is your master ? 

Chispa. Do not trouble yourself about him. We have stopped a moment 
to breathe our horses ; and if he chooses to walk up and down in the open 
air, looking into the sky as one who hears it rain, that does not satisfy my 
hunger, you know. But be quick, for I am in a hurry, and every one 
stretches his legs according to the length of his coverlet. What have we here ? 

Baltasar [setting a light on the table]. Stewed rabbit. 

Chisjja [eating]. Conscience of Portalegre ! stewed kitten, you mean ! 

Baltasar. And a pitcher of Pedro Ximenes, with a roasted pear in it. 

Chispa [drinking]. Ancient Baltasar, amigo ! You know how to cry 
wine and sell vinegar. I tell you this is nothing but vino tinto of La Mau- 
cha, with a tang of the swine-skin. 

Baltasar. I swear to you by Saint Simon and Judas, it is all as I say. 

Chispa. And I swear to you by Saint Peter and Saint Paul, that it is no 
such thing. Moreover, your supper is like the hidalgo's dinner — very little 
meat and a great deal of table-cloth. 

Baltasar. Ha! ha! ha! 

Chispa. And more noise that nuts. 

Baltasar. Ha ! ha ! ha ! You must have your joke, Master Chispa. But 
shall I not ask Don Victorian in to take a draught of the Pedro Ximenes ? 

Chispa. No ; you might as well say, " Don't you want some ?" to a 
dead man. 

Baltasar. Why does he go so often to Madrid ? 

Chispa. For the same reason that he eats no supper. He is in love. 
Were you ever in love, Baltasar ? 

Baltasar. I was never out of it, good Chispa. It has been the torment 
of my life. 

Chispa. What ! are you on fire, too, old hay-stack ? Why, we shall never 
be able to put you out. 

Victorian [without], Chispa ! 

Chispa. Go to bed, Pero Grullo, for the cocks are crowing. 

Victorian. Ea ! Chispa ! Chispa ! 

Chispa. Ea ! Senor. Come with me, ancient Baltasar, and bring water 
for the horses. I will pay for the supper to-morrow. [Exeunt^] 

Now here the question occurs — what is accomplished ? How 

has the subject been forwarded ? We did not need to learn that 

Victorian was in love — that was known before ; and all that we 



MR. LONGFELLOW, MR. WILLIS, AND THE DRAMA. 357 

glean is that a stupid imitation of Sancho Panza drinks, in the 
course of two minutes, (the time occupied in the perusal of the 
scene,) a bottle of vino tinto, by way of Pedro Ximenes, and de- 
vours a stewed kitten in place of a rabbit. 

In the beginning of the play this Chispa is the valet of Victo- 
rian ; subsequently we find him the servant of another ; and near 
the denouement, he returns to his original master. No cause is 
assigned, and not even the shadow of an object is attained ; the 
whole tergiversation being but another instance of the gross in- 
consequence which abounds in the play. 

The author's deficiency of skill is especially evinced in the scene 
of the eclaircissement between Victorian and Preciosa. The for- 
mer having been enlighted respecting the true character of the 
latter, by means of a letter received at Guadarrama, from a friend 
at Madrid, (how wofully inartistical is this !) resolves to go in 
search of her forthwith, and forthwith, also, discovers her in a 
wood close at hand. Whereupon he approaches, disguising his 
voice : — yes, we are required to believe that a lover may so dis- 
guise his voice from his mistress, as even to render his person in 
full view, irrecognisable ! He approaches, and each knowing the 
other, a conversation ensues under the hypothesis that each to the 
other is unknown — a very unoriginal, and, of course, a very silly 
source of equivoque, fit only for the gum-elastic imagination of an 
infant. But what we especially complain of here, is that our poet 
should have taken so many and so obvious pains to bring about 
this position of equivoque, when it was impossible that it could 
have served any other purpose than that of injuring his intended 
effect ! Read, for example this passage : 

Victorian. I never loved a maid ; 
For she I loved was then a maid no more. 

Preciosa. How know you that ? 

Victorian. A little bird in the air 
Whispered the secret. 

Preciosa. There, take back your gold ! 
Your hand is cold like a deceiver's hand ! 
There is no blessing in its charity ! 
Make her your wife, for you have been abused ; 
And you shall mend your fortunes mending hers. 

Victorian. How like an angel's speaks the tongue of woman, 
When pleading in another's cause her own ! 



858 MR. LONGFELLOW, MR. WILLIS, AND THE DRAMA. 

ignorant of Victorian's identity, the " pleading in another's cause 

her own," would create a favorable impression upon the reader, or 

spectator. But the advice — " Make her your wife," &c, takes 

an interested and selfish turn when we remember that she knows 

to whom she speaks. 

Again, when Victorian says, 

That is a pretty ring upon your finger, 
Pray give it me ! 

And when she replies : 

No, never from my hand 
Shall that be taken, 

we are inclined to think her only an artful coquette, knowing, as 
we do, the extent of her knowledge ; on the other hand, we should 
have applauded her constancy (as the author intended) had she 
been represented ignorant of Victorian's presence. The effect 
upon the audience, in a word, would be pleasant in place of dis- 
agreeable were the case altered as we suggest, while the effect 
upon Victorian would remain altogether untouched. 

A still more remarkable instance of deficiency in the dramatic 
tact is to be found in the mode of bringing about the discovery 
of Preciosa's parentage. In the very moment of the eclaircisse- 
ment between the lovers, Chispa arrives almost as a matter of 
course, and settles the point in a sentence : 

Good news from Court ; Good news ! Beltran Cruzado, 
The Count of the Cales is not your father, 
But your true father has returned to Spain 
Laden with wealth. You are no more a Gipsy. 

Now here are three points: — first, the extreme baldness, plati- 
tude, and independence of the incident narrated by Chispa. The 
opportune return of the father (we are tempted to say the exces- 
sively opportune) stands by itself — has no relation to any other 
event in the play — does not appear to arise, in the way of result, 
from any incident or incidents that have arisen before. It has 
the air of a happy chance, of a God-send, of an ultra-accident, in- 
vented by the playwright by way of compromise for his lack of 
invention. Nee Deus intersit, &c. — but here the god has inter- 
posed, and the knot is laughably unworthy of the god. 

The second point concerns the return of the father " laden with 
wealth." The lover has abandoned his mistress in her poverty, 



MR. LONGFELLOW, MR. WILLIS, AND THE DRAMA. 359 

and, while yet the words of his proffered reconciliation hang upon 
his lips, comes his own servant with the news that the mistress' 
father has returned " laden with wealth." Now, so far as regards 
the audience, who are behind the scenes and know the fidelity of 
the lover — so far as regards the audience, all is right ; but the 
poet had no business to place his heroine in the sad predicament 
of being forced, provided she is not a fool, to suspect both the ig- 
norance and the disinterestedness of the hero. 

The third point has reference to the words — " You are now no 
more a Gipsy." The thesis of this drama, as we have already 
said, is love disregarding the prejudices of caste, and in the de- 
velopment of this thesis, the powers of the dramatist have been 
engaged, or should have been engaged, during the whole of the 
three acts of the play. The interest excited lies in our admira- 
tion of the sacrifice, and of the love that could make it ; but this 
interest immediately and disagreeably subsides when we find that 
the sacrifice has been made to no purpose. " You are no more a 
Gipsy" dissolves the charm, and obliterates the whole impression 
which the author has been at so much labor to convey. Our ro- 
mantic sense of the hero's chivalry declines into a complacent 
satisfaction with his fate. We drop our enthusiasm, with the en- 
thusiast, and jovially shake by the hand the mere man of good 
luck. But is not the latter feeling the more comfortable of the 
two? Perhaps so; but "comfortable" is not exactly the word 
Mr. Longfellow might wish applied to the end of his drama, and 
then why be at the trouble of building up an effect through a 
hundred and eighty pages, merely to knock it down at the end of 
the hundred and eighty-first ? 

We have already given, at some length, our conceptions of the 
nature of plot — and of that of "The Spanish Student," it seems 
almost superfluous to speak at all. It has nothing of construc- 
tion about it. Indeed there is scarcely a single incident which 
has any necessary dependence upon any one other. Not only 
might we take away two-thirds of the whole without ruin — but 
without detriment — indeed with a positive benefit to the mass. 
And, even as regards the mere order of arrangement, we might 
with a very decided chance of improvement, put the scenes in a 
bag, give them a shake or two by way of shuffle, and tumble 



STO MR. LONGFELLOW, MR. WILLIS, AND THE DRAMA. 

them out. The whole mode of collocation — not to speak of the 
feebleness of the incidents in themselves — evinces, on the part of 
the author, an utter and radical want of the adapting or con- 
structive power which the drama so imperatively demands. 

Of the unoriginality of the thesis we have already spoken ; 
and now, to the unoriginality of the events by which the thesis 
is developed, we need do little more than allude. What, indeed, 
could we say of such incidents as the child stolen by gipsies — as 
her education as a danseuse — as her betrothal to a Gipsy — as her 
preference for a gentleman — as the rumors against her purity — as 
her persecution by a roue — as the inruption of the roue into her 
chamber — as the consequent misunderstanding between her and 
her lover — as the duel — as the defeat of the roue — as the receipt 
of his life from the hero — as his boasts of success with the girl — 
as the ruse of the duplicate ring — as the field, in consequence, 
abandoned by the lover — as the assassination of Lara while scaling 
the girl's bed-chamber — as the disconsolate peregrination of Vic- 
torian — as the equivoque scene with Preciosa — as the offering to 
purchase the ring and the refusal to part with it — as the " news 
from court" telling of the Gipsy's true parentage — what could 
we say of all these ridiculous things, except that we have met 
them, each and all, some two or three hundred times before, and 
that they have formed, in a greater or less degree, the staple ma- 
terial of every Hop-O'My-Thumb tragedy since the flood ? There 
is not an incident, from the first page of " The Spanish Student" 
to the last and most satisfactory, which we would not undertake 
to find boldly, at ten minutes' notice, in some one of the thou- 
sand and one comedies of intrigue attributed to Calderon and 
Lope de Vega. 

But if our poet is grossly unoriginal in his subject, and in the 
events which evolve it, may he not be original in his handling or 
tone? We really grieve to say that he is not, unless, indeed, we 
grant him the meed of originality for the peculiar manner in 
which he has jumbled together the quaint and stilted tone of the 
old English dramatists with the degagee air of Cervantes. But 
this is a point upon which, through want of space, we must ne- 
cessarily permit the reader to judge altogether for himself. We 
quote, however, a passage from the Second scene of the first 



LONGFELLOW'S BALLADS. 863 



LONGFELLOW'S BALLADS.* 

" II y aparier," says Chamfort, " que toute idee publique, toute 
convention recue, est une sottise, car elle a convenue au plus grand 
nombre." — One would be safe in wagering that any given public 
idea is erroneous, for it has been yielded to the clamor of the 
majority ; — and this strictly philosophical, although somewhat 
French assertion, has especial bearing upon the whole race of 
what are termed maxims and popular proverbs ; nine-tenths of 
which are the quintessence of folly. One of the most deplorably 
false of them is the antique adage, De gustibus non est disputan- 
dum — there should be no disputing about taste. Here the idea 
designed to be conveyed is that any one person has as just right 
to consider his own taste the true, as has any one other — that 
taste itself, in short, is an arbitrary something, amenable to no 
law, and measurable by no definite rules. It must be confessed, 
however, that the exceedingly vague and impotent treatises which 
are alone extant, have much to answer for as regards confirming the 
general error. Not the least important service which, hereafter, 
mankind will owe to Phrenology, may, perhaps, be recognised 
in an analysis of the real principles, and a digest of the resulting 
laws of taste. These principles, in fact, are as clearly traceable, 
and these laws as readily susceptible of system as are any 
whatever. 

In the meantime, the insane adage above mentioned is in no 
respect more generally, more stupidly, and more pertinaciously 
quoted than by the admirers of what is termed the " good old 
Pope," or the "good old Goldsmith school" of poetry, in 
reference to the bolder, more natural, and more ideal compositions 
of such authors as Coetlogon and Lamar tinef in France ; Herder, 

* Ballads and other Poems. By Henry "Wadsworth Longfellow, Author 
of " Voices of the Night," " Hyperion," etc : Second Edition. John Owen : 
Cambridge. 

f We allude here chiefly to the " David " of Coetlogon, and only to the 
u Chute dun Ange " of Lamartine. . 



364 LONGFELLOW'S BALLADS. 

Korner, and Uhland in Germany ; Brun and Baggesen in Den- 
mark ; Bellman, Tegner, and Nyberg* in Sweden ; Keats, Shelly, 
Coleridge, and Tennyson in England ; Lowell and Longfellow in 
America. " De gustibus non," say these " good-old-school " 
fellows ; and we have no doubt that their mental translation of 
the phrase is — " We pity your taste — we pity everybody's taste 
but our own." 

It is our purpose to controvert the popular idea that the poets 
just mentioned owe to novelty, to trickeries of expression, and 
to other meretricious effects, their appreciation by certain readers : 
— to demonstrate (for the matter is susceptible of demonstration) 
that such poetry and such alone has fulfilled the legitimate office 
of the muse ; has thoroughly satisfied an earnest and unquencha- 
ble desire existing in the heart of man. 

This volume of Ballads and Tales includes, with several brief 
original pieces, a translation from the Swedish of Tegner. In 
attempting (what never should be attempted) a literal version of 
both the words and the metre of this poem, Professor Longfellow 
has failed to do justice either to his author or himself. He has 
striven to do what no man ever did well, and what, from the 
nature of language itself, never can be well done. Unless, for 
example, we shall come to have an influx of spondees in our 
English tongue, it will always be impossible to construct an 
English hexameter. Our spondees, or, we should say, our spon- 
daic words, are rare. In the Swedish they are nearly as abundant 
as in the Latin and Greek. We have only "compound," "context," 
"footfall," and a few other similar ones. This is the difficulty ; 
and that it is so will become evident upon reading " The Children 
of the Lord's Supper," where the sole readable verses are those 
in which we meet with the rare spondaic dissyllables. We mean 
to say readable as hexameters ; for many of them will read very 
well as mere English dactylics with certain irregularities. 

Much as we admire the genius of Mr. Longfellow, we are fully 
sensible of his many errors of affectation and imitation. His 
artistical skill is great, and his ideality high. But his conception 
of the aims of poesy is all wrong ; and this we shall prove at 
some future day — to our own satisfaction, at least. His didactics 

* C. Julia Nyberg, author of the " Dikter von Euphrosyne." 



LONGFELLOW'S BALLADS. 365 



are all out of place. He has written brilliant poems — by accident ; 
that is to say when permitting his genius to get the better of his 
conventional habit of thinking — a habit deduced from German 
study. We do not mean to say that a didactic moral may not be 
well made the under-current of a poetical thesis ; but that it can 
never be well put so obtrusively forth, as in the majority of his 
compositions 

We have said that Mr. Longfellow's conception of the aims of 
poesy is erroneous ; and that thus, laboring at a disadvantage, he 
does violent wrong to his own high powers ; and now the ques- 
tion is, what are his ideas of the aims of the Muse, as we gather 
these ideas from the general tendency of his poems ? It will be 
at once evident that, imbued with the peculiar spirit of German 
song (in pure conventionality) he regards the inculcation of a 
moral as essential. Here we find it necessary to repeat that we 
have reference only to the general tendency of his compositions ; 
for there are some magnificent exceptions, where, as if by acci- 
dent, he has permitted his genius to get the better of his conven- 
tional prejudice. But didacticism is the prevalent tone of his 
song. His invention, his imagery, his all, is made subservient to 
the elucidation of some one or more points (but rarely of more 
than one) which he looks upon as truth. And that this mode 
of procedure will find stern defenders should never excite surprise, 
so long as the world is full to overflowing with cant and conven- 
ticles. There are men who will scramble on all fours through 
the muddiest sloughs of vice to pick up a single apple of virtue. 
There are things called men who, so long as the sun rolls, will 
greet with snuffling huzzas every figure that takes upon itself the 
semblance of truth, even although the figure, in itself only a 
" stuffed Paddy," be as much out of place as a toga on the statue 
of Washington, or out of season as rabbits in the days of the 
dog-star 

We say this with little fear of contradiction. Yet the spirit of 
our assertion must be more heeded than the letter. Mankind 
have seemed to define Poesy in a thousand, and in a thousand 
conflicting definitions. But the war is one only of words. In- 
duction is as well applicable to this subject as to the most palpa- 
ble and utilitarian ; and by its sober processes we find that, in 



366 LONGFELLOW'S BALLADS. 

respect to compositions which have been really received as poems, 
the imaginative, or, more popularly, the creative portions alone 
have ensured them to be so received. Yet these works, on ac- 
count of these portions, having once been so received and so 
named, it has happened, naturally and inevitably, that other por- 
tions totally unpoetic have not only come to be regarded by the 
popular voice as poetic, but have been made to serve as false 
standards of perfection, in the adjustment of other poetical claims. 
"Whatever has been found in whatever has been received as a 
poem has been blindly regarded as ex statu poetic. And this is 
a species of gross error which scarcely could have made its way 
into any less intangible topic. In fact that license which apper- 
tains to the Muse herself, it has been thought decorous, if not 

sagacious to indulge, in all examination of her character 

Poesy is a response — unsatisfactory it is true — but still in 
some measure a response, to a natural and irrepressible demand. 
Man being what he is, the time could never have been in which 
Poesy was not. Its first element is the thirst for supernal 
Beauty — a beauty which is not afforded the soul by any exist- 
ing collocation of earth's forms — a beauty which, perhaps, no 
possible combination of these forms would fully produce. Its 
second element is the attempt to satisfy this thirst by novel com- 
binations among those forms of beauty which already exist — or by 
novel combinations of those combinations which our predecessors, 
toiling in chase of the same phantom, have already set in order. 
"We thus clearly deduce the novelty, the originality, the invention, 
the imagination, or lastly the creation of beauty, (for the terms 
as here employed are synonymous,) as the essence of all Poesy. 
Nor is this idea so much at variance with ordinary opinion as, at 
first sight, it may appear. A multitude of antique dogmas on 
this topic will be found, when divested of extrinsic speculation, 
to be easily resoluble into the definition now proposed. We do 
nothing more than present tangibly the vague clouds of the 
world's idea. We recognise the idea itself floating, unsettled, in- 
definite, in every attempt which has yet been made to circumscribe 
the conception of " Poesy" in words. A striking instance of this 
is observable in the fact that no definition exists, in which either 
" the beautiful," or some one of those qualities which we have 



LONGFELLOW'S BALLADS. 367 

above designated synonymously with " creation," has not been 
pointed out as the chief attribute of the Muse. " Invention/' 
however, or "imagination," is by far more commonly insisted 
upon. The word nomas itself (creation) speaks volumes upon this 
point. Neither will it be amiss here to mention Count Bielfeld's 
definition of poetry as " JWart cfexprimer les pensees par la fic- 
tion." With this definition (of which the philosophy is profound 
to a certain extent) the German terms Dichthunst, the art of fic- 
tion, and Dichten, to feign, which are used for "poetry" and " to 
make verses" are in full and remarkable accordance. It is, never- 
theless, in the combination of the two omni-prevalent ideas that 
the novelty, and, we believe, the force of our own proposition is 
to be found 

The elements of that beauty which is felt in sound, may be the 
mutual or common heritage of Earth and Heaven. Contenting 
ourselves with the firm conviction, that music (in its modifications 
of rhythm and rhyme) is of so vast a moment to Poesy, as never 
to be neglected by him who is truly poetical — is of so mighty a 
force in furthering the great aim intended, that he is mad who re- 
jects its assistance — content with this idea we shall not pause to 
maintain its absolute essentiality, for the mere sake of rounding a 
definition. That our definition of poetry will necessarily exclude 
much of what, through a supine toleration, has been hitherto 
ranked as poetical, is a matter which affords us not even mo- 
mentary concern. We address but the thoughtful, and heed only 
their approval — with our own. If our suggestions are truthful, 
then " after many days " shall they be understood as truth, even 
though found in contradiction of all that has been hitherto so un- 
derstood. If false, shall we not be the first to bid them die ? 

We would reject, of course, all such matters as " Armstrong on 
Health," a revolting production ; Pope's " Essay on Man," which 
may well be content with the title of an " Essay in Rhyme ;" 
" Hudibras " and other merely humorous pieces. We do not 
gainsay the peculiar merits of either of these latter compositions 
— but deny them the position held. In a notice of Brain- 
ard's Poems, we took occasion to show that the common use 
of a certain instrument, (rhythm,) had tended, more than 
aught else, to confound humorous verse with poetry. The 



368 LONGFELLOW'S BALLADS. 

observation is now recalled to corroborate what we have just 
said in respect to the vast effect or force of melody in itself — an 
effect which could elevate into even momentary confusion with 
the highest efforts of mind, compositions such as are the greater 
number of satires or burlesques 

"We have shown our ground of objection to the general themes 
of Professor Longfellow. In common with all who claim the sa- 
cred title of poet, he should limit his endeavors to the creation of 
novel moods of beauty, in form, in color, in sound, in sentiment ; 
for over all this wide range has the poetry of words dominion. 
To what the world terms prose may be safely and properly left 
all else. The artist who doubts of his thesis, may always resolve 
his doubt by the single question — " might not this matter be as 
well or better handled in prose?" If it may, then is it no sub- 
ject for the Muse. In the general acceptation of the term Beauty 
we are content to rest ; being careful only to suggest that, in our 
peculiar views, it must be understood as inclusive of the sublime. 

Of the pieces which constitute the present volume, there are 
not more than one or two thoroughly fulfilling the ideas we have 
proposed ; although the volume, as a whole, is by no means so 
chargeable with didacticism as Mr. Longfellow's previous book. 
"We would mention as poems nearly true, " The Village Black- 
smith ;" " The Wreck of the Hesperus," and especially " The 
Skeleton in Armor." In the first-mentioned we have the beauty 
of simple-mindedness as a genuine thesis ; and this thesis is in- 
imitably handled until the concluding stanza, where the spirit of 
legitimate poesy is aggrieved in the pointed antithetical deduction 
of a moral from what has gone before. In " The Wreck of the 
Hesperus" we have the beauty of child-like confidence and inno- 
cence, with that of the father's stern courage and affection. But, 
with slight exception, those particulars of the storm here detailed 
are not poetic subjects. Their thrilling horror belongs to prose, 
in which it could be far more effectively discussed, as Professor 
Longfellow may assure himself at any moment by experiment. 
There are points of a tempest which afford the loftiest and truest 
poetical themes — points in which pure beauty is found, or, better 
still, beauty heightened into the sublime, by terror. But when 
we read, among other similar things, that 



LONGFELLOW'S BALLADS. 369 

The salt sea was frozen on her breast, 
The salt tears in her eyes, 

we feel, if not positive disgust, at least a chilling sense of the in- 
appropriate. In the " Skeleton in Armor " we find a pure and 
perfect thesis artistically treated. We find the beauty of bold 
courage and self-confidence, of love and maiden devotion, of reck- 
less adventure, and finally of life-contemning grief. Combined 
with all this, we have numerous points of beauty apparently in- 
sulated, but all aiding the main effect or impression. The heart 
is stirred, and the mind does not lament its mal-instruction. The 
metre is simple, sonorous, well-balanced, and fully adapted to the 
subject. Upon the whole, there are fewer truer poems than this. 
It has but one defect — an important one. The prose remarks 
prefacing the narrative are really necessary. But every work of 
art should contain within itself all that is requisite for its own 
comprehension. And this remark is especially true of the ballad. 
In poems of magnitude the mind of the reader is not, at all times, 
enabled to include, in one comprehensive survey, the proportions 
and proper adjustment of the whole. He is pleased, if at all, 
with particular passages ; and the sum of his pleasure is com- 
pounded of the sums of the pleasurable sentiments inspired by 
these individual passages in the progress of perusal. But, in 
pieces of less extent, the pleasure is unique, in the proper accep- 
tation of this term — the understanding is employed, without diffi- 
culty, in the contemplation of the picture as a whole ; and thus 
its effect will depend, in great measure, upon the perfection of its 
finish, upon the nice adaptation of its constituent parts, and es- 
pecially, upon what is rightly termed by Schlegel the unity or 
totality of interest. But the practice of prefixing explanatory pas- 
sages is utterly at variance with such unity. By the prefix, we are 
either put in possession of the subject of the poem, or some hint, 
historic fact, or suggestion, is thereby afforded, not included in 
the body of the piece, which, without the hint, is incomprehensi- 
ble. In the latter case, while perusing the poem, the reader must 
revert, in mind at least, to the prefix, for the necessary explana- 
tion. In the former, the poem being a mere paraphrase of the 
prefix, the interest is divided between the prefix and the para- 
phrase. In either instance the totality of effect is destroyed. 

16* 



370 LONGFELLOW'S BALLADS. 



Of the other original poems in the volume before us, there 
is none in which the aim of instruction, or truth, has not 
been too obviously substituted for the legitimate aim, beauty. 
We have heretofore taken occasion to say that a didactic 
moral might be happily made the under-current of a poeti- 
cal theme, and we have treated this point at length, in a 
review of Moore's " Alciphron ;" but the moral thus conveyed 
is invariably an ill effect when obtruding beyond the upper 
current of the thesis itself. Perhaps the worst specimen of 
this obtrusion is given us by our poet in " Blind Bartimeus " 
and the " Goblet of Life," where, it will be observed that 
the sole interest of the upper-current of meaning depends upon its 
relation or reference to the under. What we read upon the sur- 
face would be vox et preterea nihil in default of the moral be- 
neath. The Greek finales of " Blind Bartimeus" are an affecta- 
tion altogether inexcusable. What the small, second-hand, 
Gibbon-ish pedantry of Byron introduced, is unworthy the imita- 
tion of Longfellow. 

Of the translations we scarcely think it necessary to speak at 
all. We regret that our poet will persist in busying himself 
about such matters. His time might be better employed in ori- 
ginal conception. Most of these versions are marked with the 
error upon which we have commented. This error is in fact, 
essentially Germanic. " The Luck of Edenhall," however, is a 
truly beautiful poem ; and we say this with all that deference 
which the opinion of the " Democratic Review" demands. This 
composition appears to us one of the very finest. It has all the 
free, hearty, obvious movement of the true ballad-legend. The 
greatest force of language is combined in it with the richest ima- 
gination, acting in its most legitimate province. Upon the whole, 
we prefer it even to the "Sword-Song" of Korner. The pointed 
moral with which it terminates is so exceedingly natural — so per- 
fectly fluent from the incidents — that we have hardly heart to 
pronounce it in ill taste. We may observe of this ballad, in con- 
clusion, that its subject is more physical than is usual in Germany. 
Its images are rich rather in physical than in moral beauty. And 
this tendency, in Song, is the true one. It is chiefly, if we are not 
mistaken — it is chiefly amid forms of physical loveliness (we use 



LONGFELLOW'S BALLADS. 371 

the word forms in its widest sense as embracing modifications of 
sound and color) that the soul seeks the realization of its dreams 
of Beauty. It is to her demand in this sense especially, that the 
poet, who is wise, will most frequently and most earnestly respond. 

" The Children of the Lord's Supper" is, be} r ond doubt, a true 
and most beautiful poem in great part, while, in some particulars, 
it is too metaphysical to have any pretension to the name. 
We have already objected, briefly, to its metre — the ordinary 
Latin or Greek Hexameter — dactyls and spondees at random, 
with a spondee in conclusion. We maintain that the hexameter 
can never be introduced into our language, from the nature of 
that language itself. This rhythm demands, for English ears, a 
preponderance of natural spondees. Our tongue has few. Not 
only does the Latin and Greek, with the Swedish, and some 
others, abound in them ; but the Greek and Roman ear had be- 
come reconciled (why or how is unknown) to the reception of arti- 
ficial spondees — that is to say, spondaic words formed partly of 
one word and partly of another, or from an excised part of one 
word. In short, the ancients were content to read as they scan- 
ned, or nearly so. It may be safely prophesied that we shall 
never do this ; and thus we shall' never admit English hexameters. 
The attempt to introduce them, after the repeated failures of Sir 
Philip Sidney, and others, is, perhaps, somewhat discreditable to 
the scholarship of Professor Longfellow. The " Democratic Re- 
view," in saying that he has triumphed over difficulties in this 
rhythm, has been deceived, it is evident, by the facility with 
which some of these verses may be read. In glancing over the 
poem, we do not observe a single verse which can be read, to 
English ears, as a Greek hexameter. There are many, however, 
which can be well read as mere English dactylic verses ; such, for 
example, as the well known lines of Byron, commencing 
Know ye the | land where the | cypress and | myrtle. 

These lines (although full of irregularities) are, in their perfec- 
tion, formed of three dactyls and a csesura — just as if we should 
cut short the initial verse of the Bucolics thus — 
Tityre | tu patu | lae recu | bans — 

The " myrtle," at the close of Byron's line, is a double rhyme, 
and must be understood as one syllable. 



372 b LONGFELLOW'S BALLADS. 

Now a great number of Professor Longfellow's hexameters 
are merely these dactylic lines, continued for two feet. For ex- 
ample — 
Whispered the | race of the | flowers and j merry on | balancing j branches. 

In this example, also, " branches," which is a double ending, 
must be regarded as the caesura, or one syllable, of which alone 
it has the force. 

As we have already alluded, in one or two regards, to a notice 
of these poems which appeared in the " Democratic Review," we 
may as well here proceed with some few further comments upon 
the article in question — with whose general tenor we are happy 
to agree. 

The Review speaks of "Maidenhood" as a poem, "not to be 
understood but at the expense of more time and trouble than a 
song can justly claim." We are scarcely less surprised at this 
opfhion from Mr. Langtree than we were at the condemnation of 
" The Luck of Edenhall." 

" Maidenhood" is faulty, it appears to us, only on the score of 
its theme, which is somewhat didactic. Its meaning seems sim- 
plicity itself. A maiden on the verge of womanhood, hesitating 
to enjoy life (for which she has a strong appetite) through a false 
idea of duty, is bidden to fear nothing, having purity of heart as 
her lion of Una. 

What Mr. Langtree styles " an unfortunate peculiarity " in Mr. 
Longfellow, resulting from "adherence to a false system" has 
really been always regarded by us as one of his idiosyncratic 
merits. " In each poem," says the critic, " he has but one idea, 
which, in the progress of his song, is gradually unfolded, and at 
last reaches its full development in the concluding lines ; this sin- 
gleness of thought might lead a harsh critic to suspect intellectual 
barrenness." It leads us, individually, only to a full sense of the 
artistical power and knowledge of the poet. We confess that 
now, for the first time, we hear unity of conception objected to as 
a defect. But Mr. Langtree seems to have fallen into the singu- 
lar error of supposing the poet to have absolutely but one idea in 
each of his ballads. Yet how " one idea" can be " gradually un- 
folded" without other ideas, is, to us, a mystery of mysteries. 
Mr. Longfellow, very properly, has but one leading idea which 



LONGFELLOW'S BALLADS. 373 

forms the basis of his poem ; but to the aid and development of 
this one there are innumerable others, of which the rare excel- 
lence is, that all are in keeping, that none could be well omitted, 
that each tends to the one general effect. It is unnecessary to 
say another word upon this topic. 

In speaking of " Excelsior," Mr. Langtree (are we wrong in at- 
tributing the notice to his very forcible pen ?) seems to labor under 
some similar misconception. " It carries along with it," says he, 
" a false moral which greatly diminishes its merit in our eyes. 
The great merit of a picture, whether made with the pencil or 
pen, is its truth ; and this merit does not belong to Mr. Longfel- 
low's sketch. Men of genius may, and probably do, meet with 
greater difficulties in their struggles with the world than their 
fellow-men who are less highly gifted ; but their power of over- 
coming obstacles is proportionably greater, and the result of their 
laborious suffering is not death but immortality." 

That the chief merit of a picture is its truth, is an assertion 
deplorably erroneous. Even in Painting, which is, more essentially 
than Poetry, a mimetic art, the proposition cannot be sustained. 
Truth is not even the aim. Indeed it is curious to observe how 
very slight a degree of truth is sufficient to satisfy the mind, 
which acquiesces in the absence of numerous essentials in the 
thing depicted. An outline frequently stirs the spirit more 
pleasantly than the most elaborate picture. We need only refer 
to the compositions of Flaxman and of Retzch. Here all details 
are omitted — nothing can be farther from truth. Without even 
color the most thrilling effects are produced. In statues we are 
rather pleased than disgusted with the want of the eyeball. The 
hair of the Venus de Medicis was gilded. Truth indeed ! The 
grapes of Zeuxis as well as the curtain of Parrhasius were 
received as indisputable evidence of the truthful ability of these 
artists — but they were not even classed among their pictures. If 
truth is the highest aim of either Painting or Poesy, then Jan 
Steen was a greater artist than Angelo, and Crabbe is a more 
noble poet than Milton. 

But we have not quoted the observations of Mr. Langtree to 
deny its philosophy ; our design was simply to show that he has 
misunderstood the poet. " Excelsior " has not even a remote 



374 FANCY AND IMAGINATION. 

tendency to the interpretation assigned it by the critic. It depicts 
the earnest upward impulse of the soul — an impulse not to be 
subdued even in Death. Despising danger, resisting pleasure, 
the youth, bearing the banner inscribed "Excelsior /" (higher 
still !) struggles through all difficulties to an Alpine summit. 
Warned to be content with the elevation attained, his cry is still 
" Excelsior /" and, even in falling dead on the highest pinnacle, 
his cry is still " Excelsior /" There is yet an immortal height 
to be surmounted — an ascent in Eternity. The poet holds in 
view the idea of never-ending progress. That he is misunderstood 
is rather the misfortune of Mr. Langtree than the fault of Mr. 
Longfellow. There is an old adage about the difficulty of one's 
furnishing an auditor both with matter to be comprehended and 
brains for its comprehension. 



FANCY AND IMAGINATION. 

drake's culprit fay and moore's alciphron.* 

Amid the vague mythology of Egypt, the voluptuous scenery 
of her Nile, and the gigantic mysteries of her pyramids, Anacreon 
Moore has found all of that striking materiel which he so much 
delights in working up, and which he has embodied in the poem 
before us. The design of the story (for plot it has none) has been 
a less consideration than its facilities, and is made subservient to 
its execution. The subject is comprised in five epistles. In the 
first, Alciphron, the head of the Epicurean sect at Athens, writes, 
from Alexandria, to his friend Cleon, in the former city. He tells 
him (assigning a reason for quitting Athens and her pleasures) 
that, having fallen asleep one night after protracted festivity, he 
beholds, in a dream, a spectre, who tells him that, beside the sacred 
Nile, he, the Epicurean, shall find that Eternal Life for which he 
had so long been sighing. In the second, from the same to the 
same, the traveller speaks, at large and in the rapturous terms, of 
the scenery of Egypt ; of the beauty of her maidens ; of an ap- 
proaching Festival of the Moon ; and of a wild hope entertained that 

* Alciphron, a Poem. By Thomas Moore, Esq., author of Lalla Rookh, 
etc., etc. Carey and Hart, Philadelphia. 



FANCY AND IMAGINATION. 376 

amid the subterranean chambers of some huge pyramid lies the se- 
cret which he covets, the secret of Life Eternal. In the third let- 
ter, he relates a love adventure at the Festival. Fascinated by 
the charms of one of the nymphs of a procession, he is first in des- 
pair at losing sight of her, then overjoyed at again seeing her in 
Necropolis, and finally traces her steps until they are lost near one 
of the smaller pyramids. In epistle the fourth, (still from the 
same to the same,) he enters and explores the pyramid, and, pas- 
sing through a complete series of Eleusinian mysteries, is at length 
successfully initiated into the secrets of Memphian priestcraft ; we 
learning this latter point from letter the fifth, which concludes the 
poem, and is addressed by Orcus, high priest of Memphis, to 
Decius, a prsetorian prefect. 

A new poem from Moore calls to mind that critical opinion res- 
pecting him which had its origin, we believe, in the dogmatism of 
Coleridge — we mean the opinion that he is essentially the poet of 
fancy — the term being employed in contradistinction to imagina- 
tion. " The Fancy," says the author of the " Ancient Mariner," 
in his Biographia Literaria, " the fancy combines, the imagina- 
tion creates." And this was intended, and has been received, as 
a distinction. If so at all, it is one without a difference ; without 
even a difference of degree. The fancy as nearly creates as the 
imagination ; and neither creates in any respect. All novel con- 
ceptions are merely unusual combinations. The mind of man can 
imagine nothing which has not really existed ; and this point is 
susceptible of the most positive demonstration — see the Baron de 
Bielfeld, in his Premiers Traits de L 1 Erudition Universelle, 1767. 
It will be said, perhaps, that we can imagine a griffin, and that a 
griffin does not exist. Not the griffin certainly, but its component 
parts. It is a mere compendium of known limbs and features — 
of known qualities. Thus with all which seems to be new — which 
appears to be a creation of intellect. It is re-soluble into the old. 
The wildest and most vigorous effort of mind cannot stand the 
test of this analysis. 

We might make a distinction, of degree, between the fancy and 
the imagination, in saying that the latter is the former loftily em- 
ployed. But experience proves this distinction to be unsatisfactory. 
What we feel and know to be fancy, will be found still only 



376 FANCY AND IMAGINATION. 

fanciful, whatever be the theme which engages it. It retains its 
idosyncracy under all circumstances. No subject exalts it into the 
ideal. We might exemplify this by reference to the writings of 
one whom our patriotism, rather than our judgment, has elevated 
to a niche in the Poetic Temple which he does not becomingly 
fill, and which he cannot long uninterruptedly hold. We allude 
to the late Dr. Rodman Drake, whose puerile abortion, " The 
Culprit Fay," we examined, at some length, in a critique else- 
where ; proving it, we think, beyond all question, to belong to 
that class of the pseudo-ideal, in dealing with which we find our- 
selves embarrassed between a kind of half-consciousness that we 
ought to admire, and the certainty that we do not. Dr. Drake 
was employed upon a good subject — at least it is a subject pre- 
precisely identical with those which Shakspeare was wont so hap- 
pily to treat, and in which, especially, the author of " Lilian" has 
so wonderfully succeeded. But the American has brought to his 
task a mere fancy, and has grossly failed in doing what many 
suppose him to have done — in writing an ideal or imaginative 
poem. There is not one particle of the true *oui<m about " The 
Culprit Fay." We say that the subject, even at its best points, 
did not aid Dr. Drake in the slightest degree. He was never 
more than fanciful. The passage, for example, chiefly cited by 
his admirers, is the account of the " Sylphid Queen ;" and to 
show the difference between the false and true ideal, we collated, 
in the review just alluded to, this, the most admired passage, 
with one upon a similar topic by Shelley. We shall be pardoned 
for repeating here, as nearly as we remember them, some words 
of what we then said. 

The description of the Sylphid Queen runs thus : 

But oh, how fair the shape that lay 

Beneath a rainbow bending bright ; 
She seemed to the entranced Fay, 

The loveliest of the forms of light ; 
Her mantle was the purple rolled 

At twilight in the west afar ; 
'Twas tied with threads of dawning gold, 

And buttoned with a sparkling star. 
Her face was like the lily roon 

That veils the vestal planet's hue ; 
Her eyes two beamlets from the moon 

Set floating in the welkin blue. 



FANCY AND IMAGINATION. 377 

Her hair is like the sunny beam, 

And the diamond gems which round it gleam 

Are the pure drops of dewy even 

That ne'er have left their native heaven. 

In the Queen Mab of Shelley, a Fairy is thus introduced : 

Those who had looked upon the sight, 

Passing all human glory, 
Saw not the yellow moon, 
Saw not the mortal scene, 
Heard not the night-wind's rush, 
Heard not an earthly sound, 
Saw but the fairy pageant, 
Heard but the heavenly strains 
That filled the lonely dwelling — 

And thus described — 

The Fairy's frame was slight ; yon fibrous cloud 
That catches but the palest tinge of even, 
And which the straining eye can hardly seize 
When melting into eastern twilight's shadow, 
Were scarce so thin, so slight ; but the fair star 
That gems the glittering coronet of morn, 
Sheds not a light so mild, so powerful, 
As that which, bursting from the Fairy's form, 
Spread a purpurea/, halo round the scene, 
Yet with an undulating motion, 
Swayed to her outline gracefully. 

In these exquisite lines the faculty of mere comparison is but 
little exercised — that of ideality in a wonderful degree. It is pro- 
bable that in a similar case Dr. Drake would have formed the face 
of the fairy of the " fibrous cloud," her arms of the " pale tinge 
of even," her eyes of the " fair stars," and her body of the " twi- 
light shadow." Having so done, his admirers would have con- 
gratulated him upon his imagination, not taking the trouble to 
think that they themselves could at any moment imagine a fairy 
of materials equally as good, and conveying an equally distinct 
idea. Their mistake would be precisely analogous to that of 
many a schoolboy who admires the imagination displayed in Jack 
the Giant-Killer, and is finally rejoiced at discovering his own 
imagination to surpass that of the author, since the monsters de- 
stroyed by Jack are only about forty feet in height, and he him- 
self has no trouble in imagining some of one hundred and forty. 
It will be seen that the fairy of Shelley is not a mere compound 
of incongruous natural objects, inartificially put together, and un- 
accompanied by any moral sentiment — but a being, in the illus- 



878 FANCY AND IMAGINATION. 



tration of whose nature some physical elements are used collater- 
ally as adjuncts, while the main conception springs immediately, 
or thus apparently springs, from the brain of the poet, enveloped I 
in the moral sentiments of grace, of color, of motion — of the beau- 
tiful, of the mystical, of the august — in short, of the ideal. 

The truth is, that the just distinction between the fancy and the 
imagination (and which is still but a distinction of degree) is in- 
volved in the consideration of the mystic. We give this as an 
idea of our own altogether. We have no authority for our 
opinion — but do not the less firmly hold it. The term mystic is 
here employed in the sense of Augustis William Schlegel, and of 
most other German critics. It is applied by them to that class of 
composition in which there lies beneath the transparent upper 
current of meaning, an under or suggestive one. What we 
vaguely term the moral of any sentiment is its mystic or second- 
ary expression. It has the vast force of an accompaniment in 
music. This vivifies the air ; that spiritualizes the fanciful con- 
ception, and lifts it into the ideal. 

This theory will bear, we think, the most rigorous tests which 
can be made applicable to it, and will be acknowledged as tenable 
by all who are themselves imaginative. If we carefully examine 
those poems, or portions of poems, or those prose romances, which 
mankind have been accustomed to designate as imaginative, (for 
an instinctive feeling leads us to employ properly the term whose 
full import we have still never been able to define,) it will be seen 
that all so designated are remarkable for the suggestive character 
which we have discussed. They are strongly mystic — in the pro- 
per sense of the word. We will here only call to the reader's 
mind, the Prometheus Vinctus of JEschylus ; the Inferno of Dante; 
the Destruction of Numantia by Cervantes ; the Comus of Milton ; 
the Ancient Mariner, the Christabel, and the Kubla Khan, of 
Coleridge ; the Nightingale of Keats ; and, most especially, the 
Sensitive Plant of Shelley, and the Undine of De La Motte 
Fouque. These two latter poems (for we call them both such) 
are the finest possible examples of the purely ideal. There is little 
of fancy here, and everything of imagination. With each note 
of the lyre is heard a ghostly, and not always a distinct, but an 
august and soul-exalting echo. In every glimpse of beauty pre- 






FANCY AND IMAGINATION 379 

sented, we catch, through long and wild vistas, dim bewildering 
visions of a far more ethereal beauty beyond. But not so in poems 
which the world has always persisted in terming fanciful. Here 
the upper current is often exceedingly brilliant and beautiful ; but 
then men feel that this upper current is all. No Naiad voice 
addresses them from below. The notes of the air of the song do 
not tremble with the according tones of the accompaniment. 

It is the failure to perceive these truths which has occasioned the 
embarrassment experienced by our critics while discussing the 
topic of Moore's station in the poetic world — that hesitation with 
which we are obliged to refuse him the loftiest rank among the 
most noble. The popular voice, and the popular heart, have denied 
him that happiest quality, imagination — and here the popular 
voice {because for once it is gone with the popular heart) is right 
— but yet only relatively so. Imagination is not the leading fea- 
ture of the poetry of Moore ; but he possesses it in no little degree. 

We will quote a few instances from the poem now before us — in- 
stances which will serve to exemplify the distinctive feature which 
we have attributed to ideality. 

It is the suggestive force which exalts and etherealizes the pas- 
sages we copy. 

Or is it that there lurks, indeed, 
Some truth in man's prevailing creed, 
And that our guardians from on high, 

Come, in that pause from toil and sin, 
To put the senses' curtain by, 

And on the wakeful soul look in ! 
Again — 

The eternal pyramids of Memphis burst 
Awfully on my sight — standing sublime 
'Twixt earth and heaven, the watch-towers of time, 
From whose lone summit, when his reign hath past, 
From earth forever, he will look his last. 

And again — 

Is there for man no hope — but this which dooms 

His only lasting trophies to be tombs ! 

But 'tis not so — earth, heaven, all nature shows 

He may become immortal, may unclose 

The wings within him wrapt, and proudly rise 

Redeemed from earth a creature of the skies ! 

And here — 

The pyramid shadows, stretching from the light, 
Look like the first colossal steps of night, 



380 FANCY AND IMAGINATION 

Stalking across the valley to invade 

The distant hills of porphyry with their shade ! 

And once more — 

There Silence, thoughtful God, who loves 
The neighborhood of Death, in groves 
Of asphodel lies hid, and weaves 
His hushing spell among the leaves. 

Such lines as these, we must admit, however, are not of fre- 
quent occurrence in the poem — -the sum of whose great beauty 
is composed of the several sums of a world of minor excellences. 

Moore has always been renowned for the number and apposite- 
ness, as well as novelty, of his similes ; and the renown thus 
acquired is strongly indicial of his deficiency in that nobler merit 
— the noblest of them all. No poet thus distinguished was ever 
richly ideal. Pope and Cowper are remarkable instances in point. 
Similes (so much insisted upon by the critics of the reign of Queen 
Anne) are never, in our opinion, strictly in good taste, whatever 
may be said to the contrary, and certainly can never be made to 
accord with other high qualities, except when naturally arising 
from the subject in the way of illustration — and, when thus arising, 
they have seldom the merit of novelty. To be novel, they must 
fail in essential particulars. The higher minds will avoid their 
frequent use. They form no portion of the ideal, and appertain 
to the fancy alone. 

We proceed with a few random observations upon Alciphron. 
The poem is distinguished throughout by a very happy facility 
which has never been mentioned in connexion with its author, but 
which has much to do with the reputation he has obtained. We 
allude to the facility with which he recounts a poetical story in a 
prosaic way. By this is meant that he preserves the tone and 
method of arrangement of a prose relation, and thus obtains great 
advantages over his more stilted compeers. His is no poetical 
style, (such, for example, as the French have — a distinct style for 
a distinct purpose,) but an easy and ordinary prose manner, orna- 
mented into poetry. By means of this he is enabled to enter, 
with ease, into details which would baffle any other versifier of the 
age, and at which Lamartine would stand aghast. For anything 
that we see to the contrary, Moore might solve a cubic equation 
in verse. His facility in this respect is truly admirable, and is, no 



FANCY AND IMAGINATION. 381 

doubt, the result of long practice after mature deliberation. We 
refer the reader to page 50, of the pamphlet now reviewed ; where 
the minute and conflicting incidents of the descent into the pyra- 
mid are detailed with absolutely more precision than we have ever 
known a similar relation detailed with in prose. 

In general dexterity and melody of versification the author of 
Lalla Rookh is unrivalled ; but he is by no means at all times 
accurate, falling occasionally into the common foible of throwing 
accent upon syllables too unimportant to sustain it. Thus, in the 
lines which follow, where we have italicized the weak syllables : 

And mark 'tis nigh ; already the sun bids .... 

While hark from all the temples a rich swell. . . . 

I rushed info the cool night air. 

He also too frequently draws out the word Heaven into two 

syllables — a protraction which it never will support. 

His English is now and then objectionable, as, at page 26, where 

he speaks of 

lighted barks 
That down Syene's cataract shoots 

making shoots rhyme with flutes, below ; also, at page 6, and else- 
where, where the word none has improperly a singular, instead of 
a plural force. But such criticism as this is somewhat captious, 
for in general he is most highly polished. 

At page 27, he has stolen his "woven snow" from the ventum 
textilem of Apuleius. 

At page 8, he either himself has misunderstood the tenets of 
Epicurus, or wilfully misrepresents them through the voice of Alci- 
phron. We incline to the former idea, however ; as the philoso- 
phy of that most noble of the sophists is habitually perverted by 
the moderns. Nothing could be more spiritual and less sensual 
than the doctrines we so torture into wrong. But we have drawn 
out this notice at somewhat too great length, and must conclude. 
In truth, the exceeding beauty of " Alciphron" has bewildered 
and detained us. We could not point out a poem in any lan- 
guage which, as a whole, greatly excels it. It is far superior to 
Lalla Rookh. While Moore does not reach, except in rare snatches, 
Ithe height of the loftiest qualities of some whom we have named, 
yet he has written finer poems than any, of equal length, by the 



382 E. P. WHIPPLE AND OTHER CRITICS. 

greatest of his rivals. His radiance, not always as bright as some 
flashes from other pens, is yet a radiance of equable glow, whose 
total amount of light exceeds, by very much, we think, that total 
amount in the case of any cotemporary writer whatsoever. A vivid 
fancy ; an epigrammatic spirit ; a fine taste ; vivacity, dexterity, 
and a musical ear ; have made him very easily what he is, the 
most popular poet now living — if not the most popular that ever 
lived — and, perhaps, a slight modification at birth of that which 
phrenologists have agreed to term temperament, might have made 
him the truest and noblest votary of the muse of any age or 
clime. As it is, we have only casual glimpses of that mens 
divinior which is assuredly enshrined within him. 



E. P.WHIPPLE AND OTHER CRITICS. 

Our most analytic, if not altogether our best critic, (Mr. 
"Whipple, perhaps, excepted,) is Mr. William A. Jones, author 
of " The Analyst." How he -would write elaborate criticisms I 
cannot say; but his summary judgments of authors are, in 
general, discriminative and profound. In fact, his papers on Em- 
erson and on Macaulay, published in " Arcturus," are better 
than merely " profound," if we take the word in its now dese- 
crated sense ; for they are at once pointed, lucid, and just : — as 
summaries, leaving nothing to be desired. 

Mr. Whipple has less analysis, and far less candor, as his depre- 
ciation of " Jane Eyre" will show ; but he excels Mr. Jones in 
sensibility to Beauty, and is thus the better critic of Poetry. I 
have read nothing finer in its way than his eulogy on Tennyson. 
I say " eulogy" — for the essay in question is unhappily little 
more : — and Mr. Whipple's paper on Miss Barrett, was nothing 
more. He has less discrimination than Mr. Jones, and a more 
obtuse sense of the critical office. In fact, he has been infected 
with that unmeaning and transparent heresy — the cant of critical 
Boswellism, by dint of which we are to shut our eyes tightly to 
all autorial blemishes, and open them, like owls, to all autorial 
merits. Papers thus composed may be good in their way, just 



E. P. WHIPPLE AND OTHER CRITICS. 383 

as an impertinent cicerone is good in his way ; and the way, in 
either case, may still be a small one. 

Boccalini, his " Adertisements from Parnassus," tells us that 
Zoilus once presented Apollo with a very caustic review of a very 
admirable poem. The god asked to be shown the beauties of the 
work ; but the critic replied that he troubled himself only about 
the errors. Hereupon Apollo gave him a sack of unwinnowed 
wheat — bidding him pick out all the chaff for his pains. 

Now this fable does very well as a hit at the critics ; but I am 
by no means sure that the Deity was in the right. The fact is, 
that the limits of the strict critical duty are grossly misappre- 
hended. We may go so far as to say that, while the critic is 
permitted to play, at times, the part of the mere commentator — 
while he is allowed, by way of merely interesting his readers, to 
put in the fairest light the merits of his author — his legitimate 
task is still, in pointing out and analyzing defects and showiDg 
how the work might have been improved, to aid the general cause 
of Letters, without undue heed of the individual literary men. 
Beauty, to be brief, should be considered in the light of an axiom, 
which, to become at once evident, needs only to be distinctly put. 
It is not Beauty, if it require to be demonstrated as such : — and 
thus to point out too particularly the merits of a work, is to ad- 
mit that they are not merits altogether. 

When I say that both Mr. Jones and Mr. Whipple are, in some 
degree, imitators of Macaulay, I have no design that my words 
should be understood as disparagement. The style and general 
conduct of Macaulay 's critical papers could scarcely be improved. 
To call his manner "conventional," is to do it gross injustice. 
The manner of Carlyle is conventional — with himself. The style 
•of Emerson is conventional — with himself and Carlyle. The style 
of Miss Fuller is conventional — with herself and Emerson and 
Carlyle : — that is to say, it is a triple-distilled conventionality : — 
and by the word " conventionality," as here used, I mean very 
nearly what, as regards personal conduct, we style " affectation — 
that is, an assumption of airs or tricks which have no basis in 
reason or common sense. The quips, quirks, and curt oraculari- 
ties of the Emersons, Alcots and Fullers, are simply Lily's 
Euphuisms revived. Very different, indeed, are the peculiarities 



384 E. P. WHIPPLE AND OTHER CPJTICS. 

of Macaulay. He has his mannerisms ; but we see that, by dint 
of them, he is enabled to accomplish the extremes of unquestion- 
able excellences — the extreme of clearness, of vigor (dependent 
upon clearness) of grace, and very especially of thoroughness. For 
his short sentences, for his antitheses, for his modulations, for his 
climaxes — for everything that he does — a very slight analysis suf- 
fices to show a distinct reason. His manner, thus, is simply the 
perfection of that justifiable rhetoric which has its basis in com- 
mon sense ; and to say that such rhetoric is never called in to the 
aid of genius, is simply to disparage genius, and by no means to 
discredit the rhetoric. It is nonsense to assert that the highest 
genius would not be benefited by attention to its modes of mani- 
festation — by availing itself of that Natural Art which it too 
frequently despises. Is it not evident that the more intrinsically 
valuable the rough diamond, the more gain accrues to it from 
polish ? 

Now, since it would be nearly impossible to vary the rhetoric 
of Macaulay, in any material degree, without deterioration in the 
essential particulars of clearness, vigor, etc., those who write after 
Macaulay have to choose between the two horns of a dilemma : 
— they must be weak and original, or imitative and strong : — 
and since imitation in a case of this kind, is merely adherence to 
Truth and Reason as pointed out by one who feels their value, 
the author who should forego the advantages of the " imitation " 
for the mere sake of being erroneously original, " n'est pas si sage 
qu'il croitP 

The true course to be pursued by our critics — justly sensible of 
Macaulay's excellences — is not, however, to be content with tamely 
following in his footsteps — but to outstrip him in his own path — 
a path not so much his as Nature's. We must not fall into the 
error of fancying that he is perfect merely because he excels (in point 
of style) all his British cotemporaries. Some such idea as this 
seems to have taken possession of Mr. Jones, when he says : 

" Macaulay's style is admirable — full of color, perfectly clear, 
free from all obstructions, exactly English, and as pointedly anti- 
thetical as possible. We have marked two passages on Southey 
and Byron, so happy as to defy improvement. The one is a sharp 
epigrammatic paragraph on Southey's political bias : 



E. P. WHIPPLE AND OTHER CRITICS. 385 

Government is to Mr. South ey one of the fine arts. He judges of a theory 
or a public measure, of a religion, a political party, a peace or a war, as men 
judge of a picture or a statue, by the effect produced on his imagination. A 
chain of associations is to him what a chain of reasoning is to other men ; 
and what he calls his opinions are, in fact, merely his tastes. 

The other a balanced character of Lord Byron : 

In the rank of Lord Byron, in his understanding, in his character, in his 
very person, there was a strange union of opposite extremes. He was born 
to all that men covet and admire. But in every one of those eminent ad- 
vantages which he possessed over others, there was mingled something of 
misery and debasement. He was sprung from a house, ancient, indeed, and 
noble, but degraded and impoverished by a series of crimes and follies, which 
had attained a scandalous publicity. The kinsman whom he succeeded had 
died poor, and but for merciful judges, would have died upon the gallows. 
The young peer had great intellectual powers ; yet there was an unsound 
part in his mind. He had naturally a generous and tender heart ; but his 
temper was wayward and irritable. He had a head which statuaries loved 
to copy, and a foot the deformity of which the beggars in the street mimicked. 

Let us now look at the first of these paragraphs. The opening 
sentence is inaccurate at all points. The word "government" 
does not give the author's idea with sufficient definitiveness ; for 
the term is more frequently applied to the system by which the 
affairs of a nation are regulated than to the act of regulating. 
"The government," we say, for example, "does so and so" — 
meaning those who govern. But Macaulay intends simply the 
act or acts called " governing," and this word should have been 
used, as a matter of course. The " Mr." prefixed to " Southey," 
is superfluous ; for no sneer is designed ; and, in mistering a well- 
known author, we hint that he is not entitled to that exemption 
which we accord to Homer, Dante, or Shakspeare. " To Mr. 
Southey" would have been right, had the succeeding words been 
" government seems one of the fine arts :" — but, as the sentence 
stands, " With Mr. Southey" is demanded. " Southey," too, being 
the principal subject of the paragraph, should precede " govern- 
ment," which is mentioned only in its relation to Southey. " One 
of the fine arts" is pleonastic, since the phrase conveys nothing 
more than " a fine art" would convey. 

The second sentence is quite as faulty. Here Southey loses 
his precedence as the subject; and thus the "He" should follow 
"a theory," "a public measure," etc. By "religion" is meant a 
" creed :" — this latter word should therefore be used. The con- 
clusion of the sentence is very awkward. Southey is said to judge 

Vol. III.— IT. 



386 E. P. WHIPPLE AND OTHER CRITICS. 



of a peace or war, etc., as men judge of a picture or a statue, and 
the words which succeed are intended to explain how men judge 
of a picture or a statue : — these words should, therefore, run 
thus : — " by the effect produced on their imaginations." " Pro- 
duced," moreover, is neither so exact nor so "English" as 
" wrought." In saying that Southey judges of a political party, 
etc., as men judge of a picture, etc., Southey is quite excluded 
from the category of " men." " Other men," was no doubt origi- 
nally written, but "other" erased, on account of the "other men'* 
occurring in the sentence below. 

Coming to this last, we find that " a chain of associations " is 
not properly paralleled by " a chain of reasonm^." We must say 
either " a chain of association," to meet the " reasoning " or " a 
chain of reasons," to meet the " associations." The repetition of 
"what" is awkward and unpleasant. The entire paragraph 
should be thus remodelled : 

With Southey, governing is a fine art. Of a theory or a pub- 
lic measure — of a creed, a political party, a peace or a war — he 
judges by the imaginative effect ; as only such things as pictures 
or statues are judged of by other men. What to them a chain of 
reasoning is, to him is a chain of association; and, as to his opin- 
ions, they are nothing but his tastes. 

The blemishes in the paragraph about Byron are more negative 
than those in the paragraph about Southey. The first sentence 
needs vivacity. The adjective " opposite " is superfluous : — so is 
the particle " there." The second and third sentences are, pro- 
perly, one. " Some " would fully supply the place of " something 
of." The whole phrase "which he possessed over others," is 
supererogatory. " Was sprung," in place of " sprang," is alto- 
gether unjustifiable. The triple repetition of " and," in the fourth 
sentence, is awkward. "Notorious crimes and follies," would ex- 
press all that is implied in " crimes and follies which had attained 
a scandalous publicity." The fifth sentence might be well cur- 
tailed ; and as it stands, has an unintentional and unpleasant sneer. 
" Intellect" would do as well as "intellectual powers;" and this 
(the sixth) sentence might otherwise be shortened advantageously. 
The whole paragraph, in my opinion, would be better thus ex- 
pressed : 



E. P. WHIPPLE AND OTHER CRITICS. 887 

In Lord Byron's rank, understanding, character — even in his per- 
son — we find a strange union of extremes. Whatever men covet 
and admire, became his by right of birth ; yet debasement and 
misery were mingled with each of his eminent advantages. He 
sprang from a house, ancient it is true, and noble, but degraded 
and impoverished by a series of notorious crimes. But for mer- 
ciful judges, the pauper kinsman whom he succeeded would have 
been hanged. The young peer had an intellect great v perhaps, 
yet partially unsound. His heart was generous, but his temper 
wayward ; and while statuaries copied his head, beggars mimick- 
ed the deformity of his foot. 

In these remarks, my object is not so much to point out inac- 
curacies in the most accurate stylist of his age, as to hint that our 
critics might surpass him on his own ground, and yet leave them- 
selves something to learn in the moralities of manner. 

Nothing can be plainer than that our position, as a literary 
colony of Great Britain, leads us into wronging, indirectly, our 
own authors by exaggerating the merits of those across the water. 
Our most reliable critics extol — and extol without discrimination 
— such English compositions as, if written in America, would be 
either passed over without notice - or unscrupulously condemned. 
Mr. Whipple, for example, whom I have mentioned in this con- 
nexion with Mr. Jones, is decidedly one of our most " reliable " 
critics. His honesty I dispute as little as I doubt his courage or 
his talents — but here is an instance of the want of common dis- 
crimination into which he is occasionally hurried, by undue re- 
verence for British intellect and British opinion. In a review of 
" The Drama of Exile and other Poems," by Miss Barrett, (now 
Mrs. Browning,) he speaks of the following passage as " in every 
respect faultless — sublime :" 

Hear the steep generations how they fall 
Adown the visionary stairs of Time, 
Like supernatural thunders — far yet near, 
Sowing then- fiery echoes through the hills ! 

Now here, saying nothing of the affectation in " adown ;" not 
alluding to the insoluble paradox of "far yet near ;" not mention- 
ing the inconsistent metaphor involved in the sowing of fiery 
echoes ; adverting but slightly to the misusnge of " like " in place 



E. P. WHIPPLE AND OTHER CRITICS. 



of " as ;" and to the impropriety of making anything fall like 
thunder, which has never been known to fall at all ; merely hint- 
ing, too, at the misapplication of " steep " to the " generations " 
instead of to the " stairs V — (a perversion in no degree justified by 
the fact that so preposterous a figure as synecdoche exists in the 
school-books :) — letting these things pass, we shall still find it dif- 
ficult to understand how Mrs. Browning should have been led to 
think the principal idea itself — the abstract idea — the idea of tum- 
bling down stairs, in any shape, or under any circumstance — either 
a poetical or a decorous conception. And yet Mr. Whipple speaks 
of it as " sublime." That the lines narrowly missed sublimity, I 
grant : — that they came within a step of it, I admit ; but, unhap- 
pily, the step is that one step which, time out of mind, has inter- 
vened between the sublime and the ridiculous. So true is this 
that any person — that even I — with a very partial modification of 
the imagery — a modification that shall not interfere with its richly 
spiritual tone — may elevate the passage into unexceptionability. 
For example : 

Hear the far generations — how they crash 
From crag to crag down the precipitous Time, 
In multitudinous thunders that upstartle 
Aghast, the echoes from their cavernous lairs 
In the visionary hills ! 

No doubt my version has its faults ; but it has at least the 
merit of consistency. Not only is a mountain more poetical than 
a pair of stairs, but echoes are more appropriately typified as wild 
beasts than as seeds ; and echoes and wild beasts agree better 
with a mountain than does a pair of stairs with the sowing of 
seeds — even admitting that these seeds be seeds of fire, and be 
sown broadcast " among the hills " by a steep generation while in 
in the act of tumbling down the stairs — that is to say, of coming 
down the stairs in too great a hurry to be capable of sowing the 
seeds as accurately as all seeds should be sown : — nor is the matter 
rendered any better for Mrs. Browning, even if the construction 
of her sentence be understood as implying that the fiery seeds 
were sown, not immediately by the steep generations that tumbled 
down the stairs, but mediately, through the intervention of the 
" supernatural thunders " that were occasioned by the steep gen- 
erations that were so unlucky as to tumble down the stairs. 



J. FENIMORE COOPER. 389 



J. FENIMORE COOPER. 

" Wyandotte, or The Hutted Knoll," is, in its general features, 
precisely similar to the novels enumerated in the title.* It is a 
forest subject ; and, when we say this, we give assurance that the 
story is a good one ; for Mr. Cooper has never been known to 
fail, either in the forest or upon the sea. The interest, as usual, 
has no reference to plot, of which, indeed, our novelist seems al- 
together regardless, or incapable, but depends, first upon the na- 
ture of the theme ; secondly, upon a Robinson-Crusoe-like detail 
in its management ; and thirdly, upon the frequently repeated 
portraiture of the half-civilized Indian. In saying that the inter- 
est depends, first, upon the nature of the theme, we mean to sug- 
gest that this theme — life in the wilderness — is one of intrinsic 
and universal interest, appealing to the heart of man in all phases ; 
a theme, like that of life upon the ocean, so unfailingly omni- 
prevalent in its power of arresting and absorbing attention, that 
while success or popularity is, with such a subject, expected as a 
matter of course, a failure might be properly regarded as conclu- 
sive evidence of imbecility on the part of the author. The two 
theses in question have been handled usque ad nauseam — and 
this through the instinctive perception of the universal interest 
which appertains to them. A writer, distrustful of his powers, 
can scarcely do better than discuss either one or the other. A 
man of genius will rarely, and should never, undertake either ; 
first, because both are excessively hackneyed ; and, secondly, be- 
cause the reader never fails, in forming his opinion of a book, to 
make discount, either wittingly or unwittingly, for that intrinsic 
interest which is inseparable from the subject and independent of 
the manner in which it is treated. Very few and very dull in- 
deed are those who do not instantaneously perceive the distinc- 
tion ; and thus there are two great classes of fictions — a popular 

Wyandotte, or the Hutted Knoll. A tale, by the author of " The Path- 
finder," " Deerslayer," " Last of the Mohicans," " Pioneers," " Prairie," <fec, &c 
Philadelphia, Lea & Blanchard. 



390 J. FENIMORE COOPER. 

and widely circulated class, read with pleasure, but without ad- 
miration — in which the author is lost or forgotten ; or remem- 
bered, if at all, with something very nearly akin to contempt ; and 
then, a class not so popular, nor so widely diffused, in which, at 
every paragraph, arises a distinctive and highly pleasurable inter- 
est, springing from our perception and appreciation of the skill 
employed, or the genius evinced in the composition. After peru- 
sal of the one class, we think solely of the book — after reading 
the other, chiefly of the author. The former class leads to popu- 
larity — the latter to fame. In the former case, the books some- 
times live, while the authors usually die ; in the latter, even when 
the works perish, the man survives. Among American writers 
of the less generally circulated, but more worthy and more artis- 
tical fictions, we may mention Mr. Brockden Brown, Mr. John 
Neal, Mr. Simms, Mr. Hawthorne ; at the head of the more pop- 
ular division we may place Mr. Cooper. 

" The Hutted Knoll," without pretending to detail facts, gives 
a narrative of fictitious events, similar, in nearly all respects, to 
occurrences which actually happened during the opening scenes 
of the Revolution, and at other epochs of our history. It pic- 
tures the dangers, difficulties, and distresses of a large family, 
living, completely insulated, in the forest. The tale commences 
with a description of the " region which lies in the angle formed 
by the junction of the Mohawk with the Hudson, extending as 
far south as the line of Pennsylvania, and west to the verge of 
that vast rolling plain which composes Western New York " — a 
region of which the novelist has already frequently written, and 
the whole of which, with a trivial exception, was a wilderness be- 
fore the Revolution. Within this district, and on a creek running 
into the Unadilla, a certain Captain Willoughby purchases an es- 
tate or " patent," and there retires, with his family and depend- 
ents, to pass the close of his life in agricultural pursuits. He has 
been an officer in the British army, but, after serving many years, 
has sold his commission, and purchased one for his only son, 
Robert, who alone does not accompany the party into the forest. 
This party consists of the captain himself; his wife; his daugh- 
ter, Beulah ; an adopted daughter, Maud Meredith ; an invalid 
sergeant, Joyce, who had served under the captain ; a Presby- 



J. FENIMORE COOPER. 891 

terian preacher, Mr. Woods ; a Scotch mason, Jamie Allen ; an 
Irish laborer, Michael O'Hearn ; a Connecticut man, Joel Strides ; 
four negroes, Old Plin and young Plin, Big Smash and little 
Smash ; eight axe-men ; a house-carpenter ; a mill-wright, &c, 
&c. Besides these, a Tuscarora Indian called Nick, or Wyandotte, 
accompanies the expedition. This Indian, who figures largely in 
the story, and gives it its title, may be considered as the principal 
character — the one chiefly elaborated. He is an outcast from his 
tribe, has been known to Captain Willoughby for thirty years, 
and is a compound of all the good and bad qualities which make 
up the character of the half-civilized Indian. He does not re- 
main with the settlers ; but appears and re-appears at intervals 
upon the scene. 

Nearly the whole of the first volume is occupied with a de- 
tailed account of the estate purchased, (which is termed " The 
Hutted Knoll," from a natural mound upon which the principal 
house is built) and of the progressive arrangements and improve- 
ments. Toward the close of the volume the Revolution com- 
mences ; and the party at the " Knoll " are besieged by a band 
of savages and " rebels," with whom an understanding exists, on 
the part of Joel Strides, the Yankee. This traitor, instigated by 
the hope of possessing Captain Willoughby 's estate, should it be 
confiscated, brings about a series of defections from the party of 
the settlers, and finally, deserting himself, reduces the whole num- 
ber to six or seven, capable of bearing arms. Captain Willough- 
by resolves, however, to defend his post. His son, at this junc- 
ture, pays him a clandestine visit, and, endeavoring to reconnoitre 
the position of the Indians, is made captive. The captain, in an 
attempt at rescue, is murdered by Wyandotte, whose vindictive 
passions had been aroused by ill-timed allusions, on the part of 
Willoughby, to floggings previously inflicted, by his orders, upon 
the Indian. W T yandotte, however, having satisfied his personal 
vengeance, is still the ally of the settlers. He guides Maud, who 
is beloved by Robert, to the hut in which the latter is confined, 
and effects his escape. Aroused by this escape, the Indians pre- 
cipitate their attack upon the Knoll, which, through the previous 
treachery of Strides in ill-hanging a gate, is immediately carried. 
Mrs. Willoughby, Beulah, and others of the party, are killed. 



892 J. FENIMORE COOPER. 

Maud is secreted and thus saved by Wyandotte. At the last 
moment, when all is apparently lost, a reinforcement appears, un- 
der command of Evert Beekman, the husband of Beulah ; and 
the completion of the massacre is prevented. Woods, the preach- 
er, had left the Knoll, and made his way through the enemy, to 
inform Beekman of the dilemma of his friends. Maud and Rob- 
ert Willoughby are, of course, happily married. The concluding 
scene of the novel shows us Wyandotte repenting the murder of 
Willoughby, and converted to Christianity through the agency 
of Woods. 

It will be at once seen that there is nothing original in this 
story. On the contrary, it is even excessively common-place. 
The lover, for example, rescued from captivity by the mistress ; 
the Knoll carried through the treachery of an inmate ; and the 
salvation of the besieged, at the very last moment, by a reinforce- 
ment arriving, in consequence of a message borne to a friend by 
one of the besieged, without the cognizance of the others ; these, 
we say, are incidents which have been the common property of 
every novelist since the invention of letters. And as for plot, 
there has been no attempt at anything of the kind. The tale is 
a mere succession of events, scarcely any one of which has any 
necessary dependence upon any one other. Plot, however, is at 
best, an artificial effect, requiring, like music, not only a natural 
bias, but long cultivation of taste for its full appreciation ; some 
of the finest narratives in the world — " Gil-Bias " and " Robinson 
Crusoe," for example — have been written without its employment ; 
and " The Hutted Knoll," like all the sea and forest novels of 
Cooper, has been made deeply interesting, although depending 
upon this peculiar source of interest not at all. Thus the absence 
of plot can never be critically regarded as a defect ; although its 
judicious use, in all cases aiding and in no case injuring other 
effects, must be regarded as of a very high order of merit. 

There are one or two points, however, in the mere conduct of 
the story now before us, which may, perhaps, be considered as 
defective. For instance, there is too much obviousness in all that 
appertains to the hanging of the large gate. In more than a 
dozen instances, Mrs. Willoughby is made to allude to the delay 
in the hanging ; so that the reader is too positively and pointedly 



J. FENIMORE COOPER. 393 

forced to perceive that this delay is to result in the capture of the 
Knoll. As we are never in doubt of the fact, we feel diminished 
interest when it actually happens. A single vague allusion, well 
managed, would have been in the true artistical spirit. 

Again : we see too plainly, from the first, that Beekman is to 
marry Beulah, and that Robert Willoughby is to marry Maud. 
The killing of ' Beulah, of Mrs. Willoughby, and Jamie Allen, 
produces, too, a painful impression, which does not properly ap- 
pertain to the right fiction. Their deaths affect us as revolting 
and supererogatory ; since the purposes of the story are not 
thereby furthered in any regard. To Willoughby's murder, how- 
ever distressing, the reader makes no similar objection ; merely 
because in his decease is fulfilled a species of poetical justice. 
We may observe here, nevertheless, that his repeated references 
to his flogging the Indian seem unnatural, because we have other- 
wise no reason to think him a fool, or a madman, and these refer- 
ences, under the circumstances, are absolutely insensate. We 
object, also, to the manner in which the general interest is dragged 
out, or suspended. The besieging party are kept before the Knoll 
so long, while so little is done, and so many opportunities of ac- 
tion are lost, that the reader take's it for granted that nothing of 
consequence will occur — that the besieged will be finally delivered. 
He gets so accustomed to the presence of danger that its excite- 
ment at length departs. The action is not sufficiently rapid. 
There is too much procrastination. There is too much mere talk 
for talk's sake. The interminable discussions between Woods and 
Captain Willoughby are, perhaps, the worst feature of the book, 
for they have not even the merit of referring to the matters on 
hand. In general, there is quite too much colloquy for the pur- 
pose of manifesting character, and too little for the explanation 
of motive. The characters of the drama would have been better 
made out by action; while the motives to action, the reasons for 
the different courses of conduct adopted by the dramatis persona, 
might have been made to proceed more satisfactorily from their 
own mouths, in casual conversations, than from that of the author 
in person. To conclude our remarks upon the head of ill-con- 
duct in the story, we may mention occasional incidents of the 
merest melodramatic absurdity; as, for example, at page 156, of 

17* 



894 J. FENIMORE COOPER. 

the second volume, where " Willoughby had an arm round the 
waist of Maud, and bore her forward with a rapidity to which her 
own strength was entirely unequal." We may be permitted to 
doubt whether a young lady, of sound health and limbs, exists, 
within the limits of Christendom, who could not run faster, on 
her own proper feet, for any considerable distance, than she could 
be carried upon one arm of either the Cretan Milo'or of the Her- 
cules Farnese. 

On the other hand, it would be easy to designate many par- 
ticulars which are admirably handled. The love of Maud Mere- 
dith for Robert Willoughby is painted with exquisite skill and 
truth. The incident of the tress of hair and box is naturally and 
effectively conceived. A fine collateral interest is thrown over the 
whole narrative by the connexion of the theme with that of the 
Revolution ; and, especially, there is an excellent dramatic point, 
at page 124 of the second volume, where Wyandotte, remember- 
ing the stripes inflicted upon him by Captain Willoughby, is about 
to betray him to his foes, when his purpose is arrested by a casual 
glimpse, through the forest, of the hut which contains Mrs. Wil- 
loughby, who had preserved the life of the Indian, by inoculation 
for the small-pox. 

In the depicting of character, Mr. Cooper has been unusually 
successful in " Wyandotte." One or two of his personages, to 
be sure, must be regarded as little worth. Robert Willoughby, 
like most novel heroes, is a nobody ; that is to say, there is no- 
thing about him which may be looked upon as distinctive. Per- 
haps he is rather silly than otherwise ; as, for instance, when he 
confuses all his father's arrangements for his concealment, and 
bursts into the room before Strides — afterward insisting upon ac- 
companying that person to the Indian encampment, without any 
possible or impossible object. Woods, the parson, is a sad bore, 
upon the Dominie Sampson plan, and is, moreover, caricatured. 
Of Captain Willoughby we have already spoken — he is too often 
on stilts. Evert Beekman and Beulah are merely episodical. 
Joyce is nothing in the world but Corporal Trim — or, rather, 
Corporal Trim and water. Jamie Allen, with his prate about 
Catholicism, is insufferable. But Mrs. Willoughby, the humble, 
shrinking, womanly wife, whose whole existence centres in her 



J. FENIMORE COOPER. 395 

affections, is worthy of Mr. Cooper. Maud Meredith is still bet- 
ter. In fact, we know no female portraiture, even in Scott, which 
surpasses her ; and yet the world has been given to understand, 
by the enemies of the novelist, that he is incapable of depicting 
a woman. Joel Strides will be recognised by all who are conver- 
sant with his general prototypes of Connecticut. Michael 0'- 
Hearn, the County Leitrim man, is an Irishman all over, and his 
portraiture abounds in humor ; as, for example, at page 31, of the 
first volume, where he has a difficulty with a skiff, not being able 
to account for its revolving upon its own axis, instead of moving 
forward ! or, at page 132, where, during divine service, to exclude 
at least a portion of the heretical doctrine, he stops one of his 
ears with his thumb ; or, at page 195, where a passage occurs so 
much to our purpose that we will be pardoned for quoting it in 
full. Captain Willoughby is drawing his son up through a win- 
dow, from his enemies below. The assistants, placed at a distance 
from this window to avoid observation from without, are ignorant 
of what burthen is at the end of the rope : 

The men did as ordered, raising their load from the ground a foot or two 
at a time. In this manner the burthen approached, yard after yard, until it 
was evidently drawing near the window. 

"It's the captain hoisting up the big baste of a hog, for provisioning 
the hoose again a saige," whispered Mike to the negroes, who grinned as they 
tugged ; " and, when the craitur squails, see to it, that ye do not squail your- 
selves." At that moment the head and shoulders of a man appeared at the 
window. Mike let go the rope, seized a chair, and was about to knock the 
intruder upon the head ; but the captain arrested the blow. 

" It's one o' the vagabone Injins that has undermined the hog and come up 
in its stead," roared Mike. 

" It's my son," said the captain ; " see that you are silent and secret." 

The negroes are, without exception, admirably drawn. The 
Indian, Wyandotte, however, is the great feature of the book, 
and is, in every respect, equal to the previous Indian creations of 
the author of " The Pioneer." Indeed, we think this " forest 
gentleman " superior to the other noted heroes of his kind — the 
heroes which have been immortalized by our novelist. His keen 
sense of the distinction, in his own character, between the chief, 
Wyandotte, and the drunken vagabond, Sassy Nick ; his chival- 
rous delicacy toward Maud, in never disclosing to her that 
knowledge of her real feelings toward Robert Willoughby, which 
his own Indian intuition had discovered ; his enduring animosity 



396 J. FENIMORE COOPER. 

toward Captain Willoughby, softened, and for thirty years delayed, 
through his gratitude to the wife ; and then, the vengeance con- 
summated, his pity for that wife conflicting with his exultation 
at the deed — these, we say, are all traits of a lofty excellence 
indeed. Perhaps the most effective passage in the book, and that 
which, most distinctively, brings out the character of the Tusca- 
rora, is to be found at pages 50, 51, 52 and 53 of the second 
volume, where, for some trivial misdemeanor, the captain threatens 
to make use of the whip. The manner in which the Indian harps 
upon the threat, returning to it again and again, in every variety 
of phrase, forms one of the finest pieces of mere character-paint- 
ing with which we have any acquaintance. 

The most obvious and most unaccountable faults of " The 
Hutted Knoll," are those which appertain to the style — to the 
mere grammatical construction ; — for, in other and more important 
particulars of style, Mr. Cooper, of late days, has made a very 
manifest improvement. His sentences, however, are arranged 
with an awkwardness so remarkable as to be matter of absolute 
astonishment, when we consider the education of the author, and 
his long and continual practice with the pen. In minute descrip- 
tions of localities, any verbal inaccuracy, or confusion, becomes a 
source of vexation and misunderstanding, detracting very much 
from the pleasure of perusal ; and in these inaccuracies " Wyan- 
dotte " abounds. Although, for instance, we carefully read and 
re-read that portion of the narrative which details the situation 
of the Knoll, and the construction of the buildings and walls 
about it, we were forced to proceed with the story without any 
exact or definite impressions upon the subject. Similar difficulties, 
from similar causes, occur passim throughout the book. For 
example : at page 41, vol. I. : 

" The Indian gazed at the house, with that fierce intentness 
which sometimes glared, in a manner that had got to be, in its 
ordinary aspects, dull and besotted." This it is utterly impossi- 
ble to comprehend. We presume, however, the intention is to 
say that although the Indian's ordinary manner (of gazing) had 
" got to be " dull and besotted, he occasionly gazed with an 
intentness that glared, and that he did so in the instance in ques- 
tion. The "got to be " is atrocious — the whole sentence no less so. 



J. FENIMORE COOPER. 397 

Here at page 9, vol. I., is something excessively vague : " Of 
the latter character is the face of most of that region which lies 
in the angle formed by the junction of the Mohawk with the 
Hudson,'' &c, &c. The Mohawk, joining the Hudson, forms two 
angles, of course, — an acute and an obtuse one ; and, without 
farther explanation, it is difficult to say which it intended. 

At page 55, vol. I., we read: — "The captain, owing to his 
English education, had avoided straight lines, and formal paths ; 
giving to the little spot the improvement on nature which is a 
consequence of embellishing her works without destroying them. 
On each side of this lawn was an orchard, thrifty and young, 
and which were already beginning to show signs of putting forth 
their blossoms." Here we are tautologically informed that im- 
provement is a consequence of embellishment, and supererogato- 
rily told that the rule holds good only where the embellishment is 
not accompanied by destruction. Upon the " each orchard were " 
it is needless to comment. 

At page 30, vol. I., is something similar, where Strides is 
represented as " never doing anything that required a particle 
more than the exertion and strength that were absolutely 
necessary to effect his object." Did Mr. C. ever hear of any 
labor that required more exertion than was necessary ? He means 
to say that Strides exerted himself no farther than was necessary 
—that's all. 

At page 59, vol. I., we find this sentence — " He was advancing 
by the only road that was ever travelled by the stranger as he 
approached the Hut ; or, he came up the valley." This is merely 
a vagueness of speech. " Or " is intended to imply " that is to 
say." The whole would be clearer thus — " He was advancing 
by the valley — the only road travelled by a stranger approaching 
the Hut." We have here sixteen words, instead of Mr. Cooper's 
twenty-five. 

At page 8, vol. II., is an unpardonable awkwardness, although 
an awkwardness strictly grammatical. " I was a favorite, I 
believe, with, certainly was much petted by, both." Upon this 
we need make no farther observation. It speaks for itself. 

We are aware, however, that there is a certain air of unfairness, 
in thus quoting detached passages, for animadversion of this 



J. FENIMORE COOPER. 



kind ; for, however strictly at random our quotations may really 
be, we have, of course, no means of proving the fact to our 
readers ; and there are no authors, from whose works individual 
inaccurate sentences may not be culled. But we mean to say 
that Mr. Cooper, no doubt through haste or neglect, is remarkably 
and especially inaccurate, as a general rule ; and, by way of 
demonstrating this assertion, we will dismiss our extracts at ran- 
dom, and discuss some entire page of his composition. More 
than this : we will endeavor to select that particular page upon 
which it might naturally be supposed he would bestow the most 
careful attention. The reader will say at once — " Let this be his 
first page — the first page of his Preface." This page, then, 
shall be taker of course. 

The history of the borders is filled with legends of the sufferings of isolated 
families, during the troubled scenes of colonial warfare. Those winch we 
now offer to the reader, are distinctive in many of their leading facts, if not 
rigidly true in the details. The first alone is necessary to the legitimate 
objects of fiction. 

" Abounds with legends," would be better than " is filled with 

legends ;" for it is clear that if the history were filled with legends, 

it would be all legend and no history. The word " of," too, 

occurs, in the. first sentence, with an unpleasant frequency. The 

" those " commencing the second sentence, grammatically refers 

to the noun " scenes," immediately preceding, but is intended 

for " legends." The adjective " distinctive " is vaguely and 

altogether improperly employed. Mr. C, we believe, means to 

say, merely, that although the details of his legends may not be 

strictly true, facts similar to his leading ones have actually 

occurred. By use of the word " distinctive," however, he has 

contrived to convey a meaning nearly converse. In saying that 

his legend is " distinctive " in many of the leading facts, he has 

said what he, clearly, did not wish to say — viz : that his legend 

contained facts which distinguished it from all other legends — in 

other words, facts never before discussed in other legends, and 

belonging peculiarly to his own. That Mr. C. did mean what we 

suppose, is rendered evident by the third sentence — " The first 

alone is necessary to the legitimate objects of fiction." This 

third sentence itself, however, is very badly constructed. " The 

first" can refer, grammatically, only to "facts;" but no such 



J. FENIMORE COOPER. 



reference is intended. If we ask the question — what is meant by 
" the first?" — wliat " alone is necessary to the legitimate objects 
of fiction ?" — the natural reply is " that facts similar to the lead- 
ing ones have actually happened." The circumstance is alone to 
be cared for — this consideration "alone is necessary to the legiti- 
mate objects of fiction." 

" One of the misfortunes of a nation is to hear nothing besides 
its own praises." This is the fourth sentence, and is by no means 
lucid. The design is to say that individuals composing a nation, 
and living altogether within the national bounds, hear from each 
other only praises of the nation, and that this is a misfortune to 
the individuals, since it misleads them in regard to the actual 
condition of the nation. Here it will be seen that, to convey the 
intended idea, we have been forced to make distinction between 
the nation and its individual members ; for it is evident that a 
nation is considered as such only in reference to other nations ; 
and thus as a nation, it hears very much " besides its own 
praises ;" that is to say, it hears the detractions of other rival 
nations. In endeavoring to compel his meaning within the com- 
pass of a brief sentence, Mr. Cooper has completely sacrificed its 
intelligibility. 

The fifth sentence runs thus : — " Although the American Revo- 
lution was probably as just an effort as was ever made by a 
people to resist the first inroads of oppression, the cause had its 
evil aspects, as well as all other human struggles." 

The American Revolution is here improperly called an " effort." 
The effort was the cause, of which the Revolution was the result. 
A rebellion is an " effort " to effect a revolution. An " inroad of 
oppression " involves an untrue metaphor; for " inroad " apper- 
tains to aggression, to attack, to active assault. " The cause had 
its evil aspects as well as all other human struggles," implies that 
the cause had not only its evil aspects, but had, also, all other 
human struggles. If the words must be retained at all, they 
should be thus arranged — " The cause like [or as well as] all 
other human struggles, had its evil aspects ;" or better thus — 
"The cause had its evil aspect, as have all human struggles." 
" Other " is superfluous. 

The sixth sentence is thus written ; — <l We have been so much 



400 J. FENIMORE COOPER. 

accustomed to hear everything extolled, of late years, that could 
be dragged into the remotest connexion with that great event, 
and the principles which led to it, that there is danger of over- 
looking truth in a pseudo patriotism." The " of late years," here, 
should follow the "accustomed," or precede the "We have been;" 
and the Greek "pseudo" is objectionable, since its exact equiva- 
lent is to be found in the English " false." " Spurious " would 
be better, perhaps, than either. 

Inadvertences such as these sadly disfigure the style of " The 
Hutted Knoll ;" and every true friend of its author must regret 
his inattention to the minor morals of the Muse. But these 
" minor morals," it may be said, are trifles at best. Perhaps so. 
At all events, we should never have thought of dwelling so 
pertinaciously upon the unessential demerits of "Wyandotte," 
could we have discovered any more momentous upon which to 
comment. 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT. 401 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT.* 

"A well-bred man" says Sir James Puckle, in liis " Gray Cap 
for a Green Head," "will never give himself the liberty to speak 
ill of women." We emphasize the "man." Setting aside, for 
the present, certain rare commentators and compilers of the spc 

cies creatures neither precisely men, women, nor Mary 

Wollstoneeraft's — 'setting these aside as unclassifiable, we may ob- 
serve that the race of critics are masculine — men. With the excep- 
tion, perhaps, of Mrs. Anne Royal, we can call to mind no female 
who has occupied, even temporarily, the Zoilus throne. And 
this, the Salic law, is an evil ; for the inherent chivalry of the cri- . 
tical man renders it not only an unpleasant task to him " to speak 
ill of a woman," (and a woman and her book are identical,) but 
an almost impossible task not to laud her ad nauseam. In gene- 
ral, therefore, it is the unhappy lot of the authoress to be subject- 
ed, time after time, to the downright degradation of mere puffery. 
On her own side of the Atlantic, Miss Barrett has indeed, in one 
instance at least, escaped the infliction of this lamentable contume- 
ly and wrong ; but if she had been really solicitous of its infliction 
in America, she could not have adopted a more effectual plan than 
that of saying a few words about " the great American people," 
in an American edition of her work, published under the superin- 
tendence of an American author.f Of the innumerable " native'* 
notices of " The Drama of Exile," which have come under our 

* The Drama of Exile, and other Poems : By Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, 
Author of " The Seraphim," and other Poems. 

f We are sorry to notice, in the American edition, a multitude of typo, 
graphical errors, many of which affect the sense, and should therefore be cor- 
rected in a second impression, if called for. How far they are chargeable to 
the London copy, we are not prepared to say. " Froze," for instance, is 
printed " frore." " Foregone," throughout, is printed " forgone." " Wordless" 
is printed " worldless" — " worldly," " wordly" — " spilt," " split," etc., etc., — 
while transpositions, false accents, and mis-punctuations abound. We indicate 
a few pages on which such inadvertences are to be discovered. Vol. 1 — 23 $ 
26, 37, 45, 53, 56, 80, 166, 174, 180, 185, 251. Vol 2—109, 114, 240, 247, 
253, 272. 



402 ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT. 

observation, we can call to mind not one in which there is anything 
more remarkable than the critic's dogged determination to find 
nothing barren, from Beersheba to Dan. Another in the " Demo- 
cratic Review" has proceeded so far, it is true, as to venture a very 
delicate insinuation to the effect that the poetess " will not fail 
to speak her mind though it bring upon her a bad rhyme ;" be- 
yond this, nobody has proceeded : and as for the elaborate paper 
in the new Whig Monthly, all that anybody can say or think, and 
all that Miss Barrett can feel respecting it is, that it is an eulogy 
as well written as it is an insult well intended. Now of all the 
friends of the fair author, we doubt whether one exists, with more 
profound — with more enthusiastic reverence and admiration of her 
genius, than the writer of these words. And it is for this very 
reason, beyond all others, that he intends to speak of her the truth. 
Our chief regret is, nevertheless, that the limits of this work 
will preclude the possibility of our speaking this truth so fully, 
and so much in detail, as we could wish. By far the most valua- 
ble criticism that we, or that any one could give, of the volumes 
now lying before us, would be the quotation of three-fourths of 
their contents. But we have this advantage — that the work has 
been long published, and almost universally read — and thus, in 
some measure, we may proceed, concisely, as if the text of our 
context, were an understood thing. 

In her preface to this, the " American edition" of her late 
poems, Miss Barrett, speaking of the Drama: of Exile, says : — " I 
decided on publishing it, after considerable hesitation and doubt. 
Its subject rather fastened on me than was chosen ; and the form, 
approaching the model of the Greek tragedy, shaped itself under 
my hand rather by force of pleasure than of design. But when 
the compositional excitement had subsided, I felt afraid of my po- 
sition. My own object was the new and strange experiment of the 
fallen Humanity, as it went forth from Paradise in the Wilderness, 
with a peculiar reference to Eve's allotted grief, which, considering 
that self-sacrifice belonged to her womanhood, and the conscious- 
ness of being the organ of the Fall to her offence, appeared to 
me imperfectly apprehended hitherto, and more expressible by a 
woman than by a man." In this abstract announcement of the 
theme, it is difficult to understand the ground of the poet's hesi- 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT. 403 

tation to publish ; for the theme in itself seems admirably adapted 
to the purposes of the closest drama. The poet, nevertheless, is, 
very properly, conscious of failure — a failure which occurs not in 
the general, but in the particular conception, and which must be 
placed to the account of "the model of the Greek tragedies.'' 
The Greek tragedies had and even have hiodi merits ; but we act 
wisely in now substituting for the external and typified human 
sympathy of the antique Chorus, a direct, internal, living and 
moving sympathy itself ; and although JEschylus might have done 
service as " a model," to either Euripides or Sophocles, yet were 
Sophocles and Euripides in London to-day, they would, perhaps, 
while granting a certain formless and shadowy grandeur, indulge 
a quiet smile at the shallowness and uncouthness of that Art, 
which, in the old amphitheatres, had beguiled them into applause 
of the (Edipus at Colonos. 

It would have been better for Miss Barrett if, throwing herself 
independently upon her own very extraordinary resources, and 
forgetting that a Greek had ever lived, she had involved her Eve 
in a series of adventures merely natural, or if not this, of adven- 
tures preternatural within the limits of at least a conceivable 
relation — a relation of matter to spirit and spirit to matter, that 
should have left room for something like palpable action and com- 
prehensible emotion — that should not have utterly precluded the 
development of that womanly character which is admitted as the 
principal object of the poem. As the case actually stands, it is 
only in a few snatches of verbal intercommunication with Adam 
and Lucifer, that we behold her as a woman at all. For the rest, 
she is a mystical something or nothing, enwrapped in a fog of rhap- 
sody about Transfiguration, and the Seed, and the Bruising of the 
Heel, and other talk of a nature that no man ever pretended to un- 
derstand in plain prose, and which, when solar-microscoped into 
poetry "upon the model of the Greek drama," is about as convinc- 
ing as the Egyptian Lectures of Mr. Silk Buckingham — about as 
much to any purpose under the sun as the hi presto ! conjurations 
of Signor Blitz. What are we to make, for example, of dramatic 
colloquy such as this ? — the words are those of a Chorus of Invisi- 
ble Angels addressing Adam : 



404: ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT. 

Live, work on, Earthy ! 

By the Actual's tension 
Speed the arrow worthy 

Of a pure ascension. 
From the low earth round you 

Reach the heights above you ; 
From the stripes that wound you 

Seek the loves that love you ! 
God's divinest burnetii plain 
Through the crystal diaphane 

Of our loves that love you. 

Now we do not mean to assert that, by excessive " tension" 
of the intellect, a reader accustomed to the cant of the transcen- 
dentalists (or of those who degrade an ennobling philosophy by 
styling themselves such) may not succeed in ferretting from the 
passage quoted, and indeed from each of the thousand similar 
ones throughout the book, something that shall bear the aspect of 
an absolute idea — but we do mean to say, first, that in nine cases 
out of ten, the thought when dug out will be found very poorly 
to repay the labor of the digging ; — for it is the nature of thought 
in general, as it is the nature of some ores in particular, to be 
richest when most superficial. And we do mean to say, secondly, 
that, in nineteen cases out of twenty, the reader will suffer the 
most valuable ore to remain unmined to all eternity, before he 
will be put to the trouble of digging for it one inch. And we do 
mean to assert, thirdly, that no reader is to be condemned for not 
putting himself to the trouble of digging even the one inch ; for 
no writer has the right to impose any such necessity upon him. 
What is worth thinking is distinctly thought : what is distinctly 
thought, can and should be distinctly expressed, or should not be 
expressed at all. Nevertheless, there is no more appropriate op- 
portunity than the present for admitting and maintaining, at once, 
what has never before been either maintained or admitted — that 
there is a justifiable exception to the rule for which we contend. It 
is where the design is to convey the fantastic — not the obscure. To 
give the idea of the latter we need, as in general, the most pre- 
cise and definitive terms, and those who employ other terms but 
confound obscurity of expression with the expression of obscurity. 
The fantastic in itself, however, — phantasm — may be materially 
furthered in its development by the quaint in phraseology : — a 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT. 405 

proposition which any moralist may examine at his leisure for 
himself. 

The " Drama of Exile" opens with a very palpaple bull : — 
" Scene, the outer side of the gate of Eden, shut fast with clouds" 
— [a scene out of sight !] — " from the depth of which revolves the 
sword of fire, self-moved. A watch of innumerable angels rank 
above rank, slopes up from around it to the zenith ; and the glare 
cast from their brightness and from the sword, extends many miles 
into the wilderness. Adam and Eve are seen in the distance, flying 
along the glare. The angel Gabriel and Lucifer are beside the 
gate." — These are the "stage directions" which greet us on the 
threshold of the book. We complain first of the bull : secondly, 
of the blue-fire melo-dramatic aspect of the revolving sword ; 
thirdly, of the duplicate nature of the sword, which, if steel, and 
sufficiently inflamed to do service in burning, would, perhaps, have 
been in no temper to cut ; and on the other hand, if sufficiently 
cool to have an edge, would have accomplished little in the way 
of scorching a personage so well accustomed to fire and brimstone 
and all that, as we have very good reason to believe Lucifer was. 
"We cannot help objecting, too, to the " innumerable angels," as a 
force altogether disproportioned to the one enemy to be kept out : 
either the self-moving sword itself, we think, or the angel Gabriel 
alone, or five or six of the " innumerable" angels, would have suf- 
ficed to keep the devil (or is it Adam ?) outside of the gate — 
which, after all, he might not have been able to discover, on ac- 
count of the clouds. 

Far be it from us, however, to dwell irreverently on matters 
which have venerability in the faith or in the fancy of Miss Bar- 
rett. We allude to these nidiseries at all — found here in the very 
first paragraph of her poem, — simply by way of putting in the 
clearest light the mass of inconsistency and antagonism in which 
her subject has inextricably involved her. She has made allusion 
to Milton, and no doubt felt secure in her theme (as a theme 
merely) when she considered his " Paradise Lost." But even in 
Milton's own,day, when men had the habit of believing all things, 
the more nonsensical the more readily, and of worshipping, in 
blind acquiescence, the most preposterous of impossibilities — even 
then, there were not wanting individuals who would have read the 



406 ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT. 

great epic with more zest, could it have been explained to their 
satisfaction, how and why it was, not only that a snake quoted 
Aristotle's ethics, and behaved otherwise pretty much as he pleas- 
ed, but that bloody battles were continually being- fought between 
bloodless " innumerable angels," that found no inconvenience in 
losing a wing one minute and a head the next, and if pounded up 
into puff-paste late in the afternoon, were as good " innumerable 
angels" as new the next morning, in time to be at reveille roll-call : 
And now — at the present epoch — there are few people who do not 
occasionally think. This is emphatically the thinking age ; — indeed 
it may very well be questioned whether mankind ever substantially 
thought before. The fact is, if the " Paradise Lost" were written 
to-day (assuming that it had never been written when it was,) not 
even its eminent, although over-estimated merits, would counter- 
balance, either in the public view, or in the opinion of any critic 
at once intelligent and honest, the multitudinous incongruities 
whichc are part and parcel of its plot. 

But in the plot of the drama of Miss Barrett it is something 
even worse than incongruity which affronts : — a continuous mys- 
tical strain of ill-fitting and exaggerated allegory — if, indeed, al- 
legory is not much too respectable a term for it. We are called 
upon, for example, to sympathise in the whimsical woes of two 
Spirits, who, upspringing from the bowels of the earth, set imme- 
diately to bewailing their miseries in jargon such as this : 

I am the spirit of the harmless earth ; 

God spake me softly out among the stars, 
As softly as a blessing of much worth — 
And then his smile did follow unawares, 
That all things, fashioned, so, for use and duty, 
Might shine anointed with his chrism of beauty — 

Yet I wail 1 
I drave on with the worlds exultingly, 

Obliquely down the Godlight's gradual fall — 
Individual aspect and complexity 

Of gyratory orb and interval, 
Lost in the fluent motion of delight 
Toward the high ends of Being, beyond Sight — 
Yet I wail ! 

Innumerable other spirits discourse successively after the same 
fashion, each ending every stanza of his lamentation with the "yet 
I wail !" When at length they have fairly made an end, Eve 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT. 407 

touches Adam upon the elbow, and hazards, also, the profound 
and pathetic observation — " Lo, Adam, they wail !'' — which is no- 
thing more than the simple truth — for they do — and God deliver 
us from any such wailing again ! 

It is not our purpose, however, to demonstrate what every 
reader of these volumes will have readily seen self-demonstrated — 
the utter indefensibility of " The Drama of Exile," considered 
uniquely, as a work of art. We have none of us to be told that 
a medley of metaphysical recitatives sung out of tune, at Adam 
Mid Eve, by all manner of inconceivable abstractions, is not exactly 
the best material for a poem. Still it may very well happen that 
among this material there shall be individual passages of great 
beauty. But should any one doubt the possibility, let him be 
satisfied by a single extract such as follows : 

On a mountain peak 
Half sheathed in primal woods and glittering 
In spasms of awful sunshine, at that hour 
A lion couched, — part raised upon his paws, 
With his calm massive face turned full on thine, 
And his inane listening. When the ended curse 
Left silence in the world, right suddenly 
He sprang up rampant, and stood straight and stiff, 
As if the new reality of death 
Were dashed against his eyes, — and roared so fierce, 
(Such thick carnivorous passion in his throat 
Tearing a passage through the wrath and fear) — 
And roared so wild, and smote from all the hills 
Such fast keen echoes crumbling down the vales 
To distant silence, — that the forest beasts, 
One after one, did mutter a response 
In savage and in sorrowful complaint 
Which trailed along the gorges. 

There is an Homeric force here — a vivid picturesqueness which 
all men will appreciate and admire. It is, however, the longest 
quotable passage in the drama, not disfigured with blemishes of 
importance ; — although there are many — very many passages of 
a far loftier order of excellence, so disfigured, and which, there- 
fore, it. would not suit our immediate purpose to extract. The 
truth is, — and it may be as well mentioned at this point as else- 
where — that we are not to look in Miss Barrett's works for any 
examples of what has been occasionally termed " sustained effort ;" 
for neither are there, in any of her poems, any long commendable 



408 ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT. 

paragraphs, nor are there any individual compositions which will 
bear the slightest examination as consistent Art-products. Her 
wild and magnificent genius seems to have contented itself with 
points — to have exhausted itself in flashes ; — but it is the profu- 
sion — the unparalled number and close propinquity of these points 
and flashes which render her book one Jlame, and justify us in 
calling her, unhesitatingly, thegreatest — the most glorious of her sex. 

The "Drama of Exile" calls for little more, in the way of 
comment, than what we have generally said. Its finest particular 
feature is, perhaps, the rapture of Eve — rapture bursting through 
despair — upon discovering that she still possesses in the unwaver- 
ing love of Adam, an undreamed-of and priceless treasure. The 
poem ends, as it commences, with a bull. The last sentence gives 
us to understand that " there is a sound through the silence, as 
of the falling tears of an angel." How there can be sound during 
silence, and how an audience are to distinguish, by such sound, 
angel tears from any other species of tears, it may be as well, 
perhaps, not too particularly to inquire. 

Next, in length, to the Drama is, " The Vision of Poets." We 
object to the didacticism of its design, which the poetess thus 
states : " I have attempted to express here my view of the mission 
of the veritable poet — of the self-abnegation implied in it, of the 
uses of sorrow suffered in it, of the great work accomplished in it 
through suffering, and of the duty and glory of what Balzac has 
beautifully and truly called ' la patience angelique du genie. 1 " 
This " view " may be correct, but neither its correctness nor its 
falsity has anything to do with a poem. If a thesis is to be 
demonstrated, we need prose for its demonstration. In this in- 
stance, so far as the allegorical instruction and argumentation are 
lost sight of, in the upper current — so far as the main admitted 
intention of the work is kept out of view — so far only is the work 
a poem, and so far only is the poem worth notice, or worthy of 
its author. Apart from its poetical character, the composition is 
thoughtful, vivid, epigrammatic, and abundant in just observation 
— although the critical opinions introduced are not always our 
own. A reviewer in " Blackwood's Magazine," quoting many 
of these critical portraits, takes occasion to find fault with the 
grammar of this tristich : 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT. 409 

Here JEschylus — the -women swooned 

To see so awful when he frowned 

As the God's did — he standeth crowned. 

" What on earth," says the critic, " are we to make of the 
words ' the women swooned to see so awful' ? .... The syntax will 
punish future commentators as much as some of his own corrupt 
choruses." In general, we are happy to agree with this reviewer, 
whose decisions respecting the* book are, upon the whole, so nearly- 
coincident with ours, that we hesitated, through fear of repetition, 
to undertake a critique at all, until we considered that we might 
say a very great deal in simply supplying his omissions ; but he 
frequently errs through mere hurry, and never did he err more 
singularly than at the point now in question. He evidently sup- 
poses that u awful " has been misused as an adverb and made 
referable to " women." But not so ; and although the construc- 
tion of the passage is unjustifiably involute, its grammar is intact. 
Disentangling the construction, we make this evident at once : 
" Here iEschylus (he) standeth crowned, (whom) the women 
swooned to see so awful, when he frowned as the God's did." 
The "he" is excessive, and the "whom" is understood. Res- 
pecting the lines, 

Euripides, with close and mild 

Scholastic lips, that could be wild, 

And laugh or sob out like a child 

Right in the classes, 

the critic observes : — " ' Right in the classes' throws our intellect 
completely upon its beam-ends." But, if so, the fault possibly 
lies in the crankness of the intellect ; for the words themselves 
mean merely that Sophocles laughed or cried like a school -boy — 
like a child right (or just) in his classes — one who had not yet 
left school. The phrase is affected, we grant, but quite intelligi- 
ble. A still more remarkable misapprehension occurs in regard 

to the triplet, 

And Goethe, with that reaching eye 
His soul reached out from, far and high, 
And fell from inner entity. 

The reviewer's remarks upon this are too preposterous not to be 
quoted in full ; — we doubt if any commentator of equal dignity 
ever so egregiously committed himself before. " Goethe," he 
says, "is a perfect enigma, what does the word 'fell' mean? 

Vol. III.— 18 



410 ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT. 

fevos we suppose — that is, ' not to be trifled with.' But surely 
it sounds very strange, although it may be true enough, to say 
that his 'fellness' is occasioned by ' inner entity.' But perhaps 
the line has some deeper meaning which we are unable to fathom." 
Perhaps it has : and this is the criticism — the British criticism — 
the Blackwood criticism — to which we have so long implicitly 
bowed down ! As before, Miss Barrett's verses are needlessly in- 
volved, but their meaning requires no CEdipus. Their construc- 
tion is thus intended : — " And Goethe, with that reaching eye 
from which his soul reached out, far and high, and (in so reach- 
ing) fell from inner entity." The plain prose is this : — Goethe, 
(the poet would say,) in involving himself too far and too pro- 
foundly in external speculations — speculations concerning the world 
without him — neglected, or made miscalculations concerning his 
inner entity, or being, — concerning the world within. This idea 
is involved in the metaphor of a person leaning from a window so 
far that finally he falls from it — the person being the soul, the 
window the eye. 

Of the twenty-eight " Sonnets," which immediately succeed the 
" Drama of Exile," and which receive the especial commendation 
of Blackwood, we have no very enthusiastic opinion. The best 
sonnet is objectionable from its extreme artificiality ; and, to be 
effective, this species of composition requires a minute manage- 
ment — a well-controlled dexterity of touch — compatible neither 
with Miss Barrett's deficient constructiveness, nor with the fervid 
rush and whirl of her genius. Of the particular instances here 
given, we prefer " the Prisoner," of which the conclusion is par- 
ticularly beautiful. In general, the themes are obtrusively meta- 
physical, or didactic. 

" The Bom aunt of the Page," an imitation of the old English 
ballad, is neither very original in subject, nor very skilfully put 
together. We speak comparatively, of course : — It is not very 
good — for Miss Barrett : — and what we have said of this poem 
will apply equally to a very similar production, " The Rhyme of 
the Dutchess May." The "Poet and the Bird"— "A Child 
Asleep" — "Crowned and Wedded" — " Crowned and Buried" — 
"To Flush my Dog"—" The Four-fold Aspect "—" A Flower in 
a Letter"— A Lay of the Early Rose"—" That Day"—" L. E. L.'s 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT. 411 

Questio"— " Catarina to Camoens "— " Wine of Cyprus"— "The 
Dead Pan"—" Sleeping and Watching"—" A Portrait"—" The 
Mournful Mother" — and " A Valediction" — although all burning 
with divine fire, manifested only in scintillations, have nothing in 
them idiosyncratic. " The House of Clouds " and " The Last 
Bower" are superlatively lovely, and show the vast powers of the 
poet in the field best adapted to their legitimate display : — the 
themes, here, could not be improved. The former poem is purely 
imaginative ; the latter is unobjectionably because unobtrusively 
suggestive of a moral, and is, perhaps, upon the whole, the most 
admirable composition in the two volumes : — or, if it is not, then 
"The Lay of the Brown Rosarie" is. In this last the ballad- 
character is elevated — etherealized — and thus made to afford scope 
for an ideality at once the richest and most vigorous in the world. 
The peculiar foibles of the author are here too, dropped bodily, as 
a mantle, in the tumultuous movement and excitement of the 
narrative. 

Miss Barrett has need only of real self-interest in her subjects, 
to do justice to her subjects and to herself. On the other hand, 
" A Rhapsody of Life's Progress," although gleaming with cold 
corruscations, is the least meritorious, because the most philoso- 
phical, efFusion of the whole : — this, we say, in flat contradiction 
of the " spoudiotaton kai philosophikotaton genos" of Aristotle. 
" The Cry of the Human" is singularly effective, not more from the 
vigor and ghastly passion of its thought, than from the artistically- 
conceived arabesquerie of its rhythm. " The Cry of the Children," 
similar, although superior in tone and handling, is full of a nerv- 
ous unflinching energy — a horror sublime in its simplicity — of 
which a far greater than Dante might have been proud. " Bertha 
in the Lane," a rich ballad, very singularly excepted from the 
wholesale commendation of the " Democratic Review," as " per- 
haps not one of the best," and designated by Blackwood, on the 
contrary, as " decidedly the finest poem of the collection," is not 
the very best, we think, only because mere pathos, however ex- 
quisite, cannot be ranked with the loftiest exhibitions of the ideal. 
Of "Lady Geraldine's Courtship," the magazine last quoted ob- 
serves that " some pith is put forth in its passionate parts." We 
will not pause to examine the delicacy or lucidity of the metaphor 



412 ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT. 

embraced in the "putting forth of some pith ;" but unless by 
" some pith" itself, is intended the utmost conceivable intensity 
and vigor, then the critic is merely damning with faint praise. 
With the exception of Tennyson's " Locksley Hall," we have 
never perused a poem combining so much of the fiercest passion 
•with so much of the most ethereal fancy, as the " Lady Geral- 
di ne's Courtship," of Miss Barrett. We are forced to admit, how- 
ever, that the latter work is a very palpable imitation of the 
former, which it surpasses in plot, or rather in thesis, as much as 
it falls below it in artistical management, and a certain calm 
energy — lustrous and indomitable — such as we might imagine in 
a broad river of molten gold. 

It is in the " Lady Geraldine" that the critic of Blackwood is 
again put at fault in the comprehension of a couple of passages. 
He confesses his inability " to make out the construction of the 
words, ' all that spirits pure and ardent are cast out of love and 
reverence, because chancing not to hold.' " There are compara- 
tively few American school-boys who could not parse it. The 
prosaic construction would run thus : — all that (wealth under- 
stood) because chancing not to hold which, (or on account of not 
holding which) all pure and ardent spirits are cast out of love and 
reverence." The " which" is involved in the relative pronoun 
" that" — the second word of the sentence. All that we know is, 
that Miss Barrett is right : — here is a parallel phrase, meaning — 
" all that (which) we know," etc. The fact is, that the accusation 
of imperfect grammar would have been more safely, if more gen- 
erally, urged : in descending to particular exceptions, the reviewer 
has been doing little more than exposing himself at all points. 

Turning aside, however, from grammar, he declares his inca- 
pacity to fathom the meaning of 

She has halls and she has castles, and the resonant steam-eagles 
Follow far on the directing of her floating dove-like hand — 

With a thunderous vapor trailing underneath the starry vigils, 
So to mark upon the blasted heaven the measure of her land. 

Now it must be understood that he is profoundly serious in his 
declaration — he really does not apprehend the thought designed — 
and he is even more than profoundly serious, too, in intending 
these his own comments upon his own stolidity, for wit : — " We 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT. 413 

thought that steam-coaches generally followed the directing of no 
hand except the stoker's, but it, certainly, is always much liker a 
raven than a dove." After this, who shall question the infalli- 
bility of Christopher North ? We presume there are very few of 
our readers who will not easily appreciate the richly imaginative 
conception of the poetess : — The Lady Geraldine is supposed to 
be standing in her own door, (positively not on the top of an en- 
gine), and thence pointing, " with her floating dove-like hand," 
to the lines of vapor, from the " resonant steam-eagles," that 
designate upon the " blasted heaven," the remote boundaries of 
her domain. — But, perhaps, we are guilty of a very gross absurdity 
ourselves, in commenting at all upon the whimsicalities of a re- 
viewer who can deliberately select for special animadversion the 
second of the four verses we here copy : 

Eyes, he said, now throbbing through me ! are ye eyes that did undo me ? 
Shining eyes like antique jewels set in Parian statue-stone ! 
Underneath that calm white forehead are ye ever burning torrid 
O'er the desolate sand desert of my heart and life undone ? 

The ghost of the Great Frederick might, to be sure, quote at 
us, in his own Latin, his favorite adage, " De gustibus non est 
disputandws ;" — but, when we take into consideration the moral 
designed, the weirdness of effect intended, and the historical adap- 
tation of the fact alluded to, in the line italicized, (a fact of which 
it is by no means impossible that the critic is ignorant), we cannot 
refrain from expressing our conviction — and we here express it in 
the teeth of the whole horde of the Ambrosianians — that from the 
entire range of poetical literature there shall not, in a century, be 
produced a more sonorous — a more vigorous verse — a juster — a 
nobler — a more ideal — a more magnificent image — than this very 
image, in this very verse, which the most noted magazine of Eu- 
rope has so especially and so contemptuously condemned. 

" The Lady Geraldine" is, we think, the only poem of its au- 
thor which is not deficient, considered as an artistical whole. Her 
constructive ability, as we have already suggested, is either not 
very remarkable, or has never been properly brought into play : — 
in truth, her genius is too impetuous for the minuter technicali- 
ties of that elaborate Art so needful in the building up of pyra- 
mids for immortality. This deficiency, then — if there be any 



414 ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT. 

such — is her chief weakness. Her other foibles, although some 
of them are, in fact, glaring, glare, nevertheless, to no very mate- 
rial ill purpose. There are none which she will not readily dismiss 
in her future works. She retains them now, perhaps, because 
unaware of their existence. 

Her affectations are unquestionably many, and generally inex- 
cusable. We may, perhaps, tolerate such words as "ble," 
" chrysm," " nympholeptic," " cenomel," and " chrysopras" — 
they have at least the merit either of distinct meaning, or of terse 
and sonorous expression ; — but what can be well said in defence 
of the unnecessary nonsense of " 'ware" for " aware" — of " 'bide," 
for "abide"— of "'gins," for "begins"— of "'las for "alas"— 
of " oftly," " ofter," and " oftest," for " often," " more often," 
and " most often" — or of " erelong" in the sense of " long ago" ? 
That there is authority for the mere words proves nothing ; those 
who employed them in their day would not employ them if wri- 
ting now. Although we grant, too, that the poetess is very 
usually Homeric in her compounds, there is no intelligibility of 
construction, and therefore no force of meaning in " dew-pallid," 
" pale-passioned," and " silver-solemn." Neither have we any 
partiality for " drave" or " supreme," or " foment" ; and while 
upon this topic, we may as well observe that there are few readers 
who do anything but laugh or stare, at such phrases as " L. E. 
L.'s Last Questio" — " The Cry of the Human" — " Leaning from 
my Human" — " Heaven assist the human" — " the full sense of 
your mortal" — "a grave for your divine" — " foiling off from our 
created" — " he sends this gage for thy pity's counting" — " they 
could not press their futures on the present of her courtesy" — or 
" could another fairer lack to thee, lack to thee ?" There are few, 
at the same time, who do not feel disposed to weep outright, when 
they hear of such things as " Hope withdrawing her perad ven- 
ture" — " spirits dealing in pathos of antithesis" — " angels in an- 
tagonism to God and his reflex beatitudes" — " songs of glories 
ruffling down doorways" — " God's possibles" — and " rules of 
Mandom." 

We have already said, however, that mere quaintness within 
reasonable limit, is not only not to be regarded as affectation, but 
has its proper artistic uses in aiding a fantastic effect. We quote, 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT. 415 

from the lines " To my dog Flush," a passage in exemplifica- 
tion: 

Leap ! thy broad tail waves a light ! 
Leap ! thy slender feet are bright, 

Canopied in fringes ! 
Leap ! those tasselled ears of thine 
Flicker strangely, fair and fine, 
Down their qolden inches ! 



And again — from the song of a tree-spirit, in the " Drama of 

Exile :" 

The Divine impulsion cleaves 
In dim movements to the leaves 
Dropt and lifted, dropt and lifted, 
In the suu-light greenly sifted, — 
In the sun-light and the moon- 
Greenly sifted through the trees. 
Ever wave the Eden trees, 
In the night-light and the noon- 
With a ruffling of green branches, 
Shaded off' to resonances, 
Never stirred by rain or breeze. 

The thoughts, here, belong to the highest order of poetry, but 
they could not have been wrought into effective expression, 
without the instrumentality of those repetitions — those unusual 
phrases — in a word, those quaintnesses, which it has been too long 
the fashion to censure, indiscriminately, under the one general 
head of " affectation." No true poet will fail to be enraptured 
with the two extracts above quoted — but we believe there are few 
who would not find a difficulty in reconciling the psychal impossi- 
bility of refraining from admiration, with the too-hastily attained 
mental conviction that, critically, there is nothing to admire. 

Occasionally, we meet in Miss Barrett's poems a certain far- 
fetchedness of imagery, which is reprehensible in the extreme. 
"What, for example, are we to think of 

Now he hears the angel voices 
Folding silence in the room ? — 

undoubtedly, that it is nonsense, and no more ; or of 

How the silence round you shivers 
"While our voices through it go ? — 

again, unquestionably, that it is nonsense, and nothing beyond. 

Sometimes we are startled by knotty paradoxes ; and it is not 

acquitting their perpetrator of all blame on their account to admit 

that, in some instances, they are susceptible of solution. It is 



416 ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT. 

really difficult to discover anything for approbation, in enigmas 

such as 

That bright impassive, passive angel-hood, 
or — 

The silence of my heart is full of sound. 

At long intervals, we are annoyed by specimens of repulsive 

imagery, as where the children cry ; 

How long, cruel nation, 
Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's heart — 
Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation ? etc. 

Now and then, too, we are confounded by a pure platitude, as 

when Eve exclaims : 

Leave us not 
In agony beyond what we can bear, 
And in abasement below thunder-mark ! 

or, when the Savior is made to say : 

So, at last. 
He shall look round on you with lids too straight 
To hold the grateful tears. 

" Strait" was, no doubt, intended, but does not materially elevate, 
although it slightly elucidates, the thought. A very remarkable 
passage is that, also, wherein Eve bids the infant voices 

Hear the steep generations, how they fall 
Adown the visionary stairs of Time, 
Like supernatural thunders — far yet near, 
Sowing their fiery echoes through the hills ! 

Here, saying nothing of the affectation in " adown ;" not allu- 
ding to the insoluble paradox of " far yet near ;" not mentioning 
the inconsistent metaphor involved in the " sowing of fiery 
echoes ;" adverting but slightly to the misusage of " like," in 
place of " as," and to the impropriety of making any thing fall 
like thunder, which has never been known to fall at all ; merely 
hinting, too, at the misapplication of " steep," to the " genera- 
tions," instead of to the " stairs" — a perversion in no degree to 
be justified by the fact that so preposterous a figure as synecdoche 
exists in the school books ; — letting these things pass, for the pre- 
sent, we shall still find it difficult to understand how Miss Barrett 
should have been led to think that the principal idea itself — the 
abstract idea — the idea of tumbling down stairs, in any shape, or 
under any circumstances — either a poetical or a decorous concep- 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT. 417 

tion. 'And yet we have seen this very passage quoted as " sub- 
lime," by a critic who seems to take it for granted, as a general 
rule, that Nat-Leeism is the loftiest order of literary merit. That 
the lines very narrowly missed sublimity, we grant ; that they 
came within a step of it, we admit ; — but, unhappily, the step is 
that one step which, time out of mind, has intervened between 
the sublime and the ridiculous. So true is this, that any person — 
that even we — with a very partial modification of the imagery — a 
modification that shall not interfere with its richly spiritual tone — 
may elevate the quotation into unexceptionability. For example : 
and we offer it with profound deference — 

Hear the far generations — how they crash, 
From crag to crag, down the precipitous Time, 
In multitudinous thunders that upstartle, 
Aghast, the echoes from their cavernous lairs 
In the visionary hills ! 

"We have no doubt that our version has its faults — but it has, 
at least, the merit of consistency. Not only is a mountain more 
poetical than a pair of stairs ; but echoes are more appropriately 
typified as wild beasts than as seeds ; and echoes and wild beasts 
agree better with a mountain, than does a pair of stairs with the 
sowing of seeds — even admitting' that these seeds be seeds of fire, 
and be sown broadcast " among the hills,'' by a steep generation, 
while in the act of tumbling down the stairs — that is to say, of 
coining down the stairs — in too violent a hurry to be capable of 
sowing the seeds as accurately as all seeds should be sown ; nor 
is the matter rendered any better for Miss Barrett, even if the 
construction of her sentence is to be understood as implying that 
the fiery seeds were sown, not immediately by the steep genera- 
tions that tumbled down the stairs, but mediately, through the 
intervention of the " supernatural thunders'' that were occasioned 
by the " steep generations" that tumbled down the stairs. 

The poetess is not unfrequently guilty of repeating herself. 
The " thunder cloud veined by lightning" appears, for instance, 
on pages 34 of the first, and 228 of the second volume. The 
" silver clash of wings" is heard at pages 53 of the first, and 269 
of the second ; and angel tears are discovered to be falling as 
well at page 27, as at the conclusion of " The Drama of Exile." 
Steam, too, in the shape of Death's White Horse, comes upon 

18* 



418 ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT. 

tbe ground, both at page 244 of the first, and 179 of the second 
volume — and there are multitudinous other repetitions, both of 
phrase and idea — but it is the excessive reiteration of pet words 
which is, perhaps, the most obtrusive of the minor errors of the 
poet. " Chrystalline," "Apocalypse," "foregone," "evangel," 
" 'ware," " throb," " level," " loss," and the musical term " mi- 
nor," are forever upon her lips. The chief favorites, however, are 
" down" and " leaning," which are echoed and re-echoed not only 
ad infinitum, but in every whimsical variation of import. As Miss 
Barrett certainly cannot be aware of the extent of this mannerism, 
we will venture to call her attention to a few — comparatively a 
very few examples. 

Pealing down the depths of Godhead. . . . 

Smiling down, as Venus down the waves. . . . 

Smiling down the steep world very purely. . . . 

Down the purple of this chamber. . . . 

Moving down the hidden depths of loving. . . . 

Cold the sun shines down the door. . . . 

Which brought angels down our talk. . . . 

Let your souls behind you lean gently moved .... 

But angels leaning from the golden seats. . . . 

And melancholy leaning out of heaven. . . . 

And I know the heavens are leaning down .... 

Then over the casement she leaneth. . . . 

Forbear that dream, too near to heaven it leaned. . . . 

I would lean my spirit o'er you .... 

Thou, O sapient angel, leanest o'er. . . . 

Shapes of brightness overlean thee. . . . 

They are leaning their young heads .... 

Out of heaven shall o'er you lean. . . . 

While my spirit leans and reaches. . . . 

etc. etc. etc. 
In the matter of grammar, upon which the Edinburgh critic 
insists so pertinaciously, the author of " The Drama of Exile " 
seems to us even peculiarly without fault. The nature of her 
studies has, no doubt, imbued her with a very delicate instinct of 
constructive accuracy. The occasional use of phrases so question- 
able as " from whence " and the far-fetchedness and involution of 
which we have already spoken, are the only noticeable blemishes 
of an exceedingly chaste, vigorous, and comprehensive style. 
In her inattention to rhythm, Mrs. Barrett is guilty of an error 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT. 419 

that might have been fetal to her fame — that would have been 
fatal to any reputation less solidly founded than her own. We 
do not allude, so particularly, to her multiplicity of inadmissible 
rhymes. We would wish, to be sure, that she had not thought 
proper to couple Eden and succeeding — glories and floorwise — 
burning and morning — thither and aether — enclose me and across 
me — misdoers and flowers — centre and winter — guerdon and par- 
don — conquer and anchor — desert and unmeasured — atoms and 
fathoms — opal and people — glory and doorway — trumpet and 
accompted — taming and overcame him — coming and woman — is 
and trees — off and sun-proof — eagles and vigils — nature and sa- 
tire — poems and interflowings — certes and virtues — pardon and 
burden — thereat and great — children and bewildering — mortal 
and turtle — moonshine and sunshine. It would have been bet- 
ter, we say, if such apologies for rhymes as these had been re- 
jected. But deficiencies of rhijthm are more serious. In some 
cases it is nearly impossible to determine what metre is intended. 
" The Cry of the Children " cannot be scanned : we never saw 
so poor a specimen of verse. In imitating the rhythm of " Locks- 
ley Hall," the poetess has preserved with accuracy (so far as mere 
syllables are concerned) the forcible line of seven trochees with a 
final caesura. The " double rhymes " have only the force of a 
single long syllable — a caesura ; but the natural rhythmical divi- 
sion, occurring at the close of the fourth trochee, should never be 
forced to occur, as Miss Barrett constantly forces it, in the middle 
of a word, or of an indivisible phrase. If it do so occur, we 
must sacrifice, in perusal, either the sense or the rhythm. If she 
will consider, too, that this line of seven trochees and a caesura, 
is nothing more than two lines written in one — a line of four 
trochees, succeeded by one of three trochees and a caesura — she 
will at once see how unwise she has been in composing her poem 
in quatrains of the long line with alternate rhymes, instead of 
immediate ones, as in the case of " Locksley Hall." The result 
is, that the ear, expecting the rhymes before they occur, does not 
appreciate them when they do. These points, however, will be 
best exemplified by transcribing one of the quatrains in its natural 
arrangement. That actually employed is addressed only to the 
eye. 



420 ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT. 

Oh, she fluttered like a tame bird 

Jn among its forest brothers 
Ear too strong for it, then, drooping, 

Bowed her face upon her hands — 
And I spake out wildly, fiercely, 

Brutal truths of her and others ! 
I, she planted in the desert, 

Swathed her 'wind-like, with my sands. 

Here it will be seen that there is a paucity of rhyme, and that 
it is expected at closes where it does not occur. In fact, if we 
consider the eight lines as two independent quatrains, (which 
they are,) then we find them entirely rhymeless. Now so un- 
happy are these metrical defects — of so much importance do we 
take them to be, that we do not hesitate in declaring the general 
inferiority of the poem to its prototype to be altogether chargea- 
ble to them. With equal rhythm " Lady Geraldine " had been 
far — very far the superior poem. Inefficient rhythm is inefficient 
poetical expression ; and expression, in poetry, — what is it ? — 
what is it not ? No one living can better answer these queries 
than Miss Barrett. 

We conclude our comments upon her versification, by quoting 
(we will not say whence — from what one of her poems) — a few 
verses without the linear division as it appears in the book. 
There are many readers who would never suspect the passage to 
be intended for metre at all. — " Ay ! — and sometimes, on the hill- 
side, while we sat down on the go wans, with the forest green be- 
hind us, and its shadow cast before, and the river running under, 
and, across it from the rowens a partridge whirring near us till 
we felt the air it bore — there, obedient to her praying, did I read 
aloud the poems made by Tuscan flutes, or instruments more va- 
rious of our own — read the pastoral parts of Spencer — or the 
subtle interflowings found in Petrarch's sonnets ; — here's the book ! 
— the leaf is folded down !" 

With this extract we make an end of our fault-finding — and 
now, shall we speak, equally in detail, of the beauties of this book ? 
Alas ! here, indeed, do we feel the impotence of the pen. We 
have already said that the supreme excellence of the poetess 
whose works we review, is made up of the multitudinous sums 
of a world of k>fty merits. It is the multiplicity — it is the ag- 
gregation — which excites our most profound enthusiasm, and en- 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT. 421 

forces our most earnest respect. But unless we had space to 
extract three-fourths of the volumes, how could we convey this 
aggregation by specimens ? We might quote, to be sure, an ex- 
ample of keen insight into our psychal nature, such as * v ; : 

I fell flooded with a Dark, 

In the silence of a swoon — 
When I rose, still cold and stark, 

There was night, — I saw the moon ; 
And the stars, each in its place, 
And the May-blooms on the grass, 
Seemed to wonder what I was. 
And I walked as if apart 

From myself when I could stand — 
And I pitied my own heart, 

As if I held it in my hand 
Somewhat coldly, — with a sense 
Of fulfilled benevolence. 

Or we might copy an instance of the purest and most radiant 
imagination, such as this : 

So, young muser, I sat listening 

To my Fancy's wildest word — 

On a sudden, through the glistening 

Leaves around, a little stirred, 
Came a sound, a sense of music, which was rather felt than heard. 

Softly, finely, it inwound me — 

From the world it shut me in — 

Like a fountain falling round me 

Which with silver waters thin, 
Holds a little marble Naiad sitting smilingly within 

Or, again, we might extract a specimen of wild Dantesque vigor, 
such as this — in combination with a pathos never excelled : 

Ay ! be silent — let them hear each other breathing 

For a moment, mouth to mouth — 
Let them touch each others' hands in a fresh wreathing 

Of their tender human youth ! 
Let them feel that this cold metallic motion 

Is not all the life God fashions or reveals — 
Let them prove their inward souls against the notion 

That they five in you, or under you, O wheels ! 

Or, still again, we might give a passage embodying the most ele- 
vated sentiment, most tersely and musically thus expressed : 

And since, Prince Albert, men have called thy spirit high and rare, 
And true to truth, and brave for truth, as some at Augsburg were — 
We charge thee by thy lofty thoughts and by thy poet-mind, 
Which not by glory or degree takes measure of mankind, 
Esteem that wedded hand less dear for sceptre than for ring, 
And hold her uncrowned womanhood to be the royal thing ! 



422 ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT. 

These passages, we say, and a hundred similar ones, exempli- 
fying particular excellences, might be displayed, and we should 
still fail, as lamentably as the skolastikos with his brick, in con- 
veying an idea of the vast totality. By no individual stars can 
we present the constellate ry radiance of the book. To the book, 
then, with implicit confidence we appeal. 

That Miss Barrett has done more, in poetry, than any woman, 
living or dead, will scarcely be questioned : — that she has sur- 
passed all her poetical contemporaries of either sex (with a single 
exception,) is our deliberate opinion — not idly entertained, we 
think, nor founded on any visionary basis. It may not be unin- 
teresting, therefore, in closing this examination of her claims, to 
determine in what manner she holds poetical relation with these 
contemporaries, or with her immediate predecessors, and es- 
pecially with the great exception to which we have alluded, — if 
at all. 

If ever mortal " wreaked his thoughts upon expression," it was 
Shelley. If ever poet sang (as a bird sings) — impulsively — earn- 
estly — with utter abandonment — to himself solely — and for the 
mere joy of his own song — that poet was the author of the Sen- 
sitive Plant. Of Art — beyond that which is the inalienable in- 
stinct of Genius — he either had little or disdained all. He really 
disdained that Rule which is the emanation from Law, because his 
own soul was law in itself. His rhapsodies are but the rough 
notes — the stenographic memoranda of poems — memoranda which, 
because they were all-sufficient for his own intelligence, he cared 
not to be at the trouble of transcribing in full for mankind. In 
his whole life he wrought not thoroughly out a single conception. 
For this reason it is that he is the most fatiguing of poets. Yet 
he wearies in having done too little, rather than too much ; what 
seems in him the diffuseness of one idea, is the conglomerate con- 
cision of many ; — and this concision it is which renders him ob- 
scure. "With such a man, to imitate was out of the question ; it 
would have answered no purpose — for he spoke to his own spirit 
alone, which would have comprehended no alien tongue ; — he 
was, therefore, profoundly original. His quaintness arose from 
intuitive perception of that truth to which Lord Verulam alone 
has given distinct voice : — " There is no exquisite beauty which 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT. 423 

has not some strangeness in its proportion." But whether ob- 
scure, original, or quaint, he was at all times sincere. He had no 
affectations. 

From the ruins of Shelley there sprang into existence, affront- 
ing the Heavens, a tottering and fantastic pagoda, in which the 
salient angles, tipped with mad jangling bells, were the idiosyn- 
cratic faults of the great original — faults which cannot be called 
such in view of his purposes, but which are monstrous when we 
regard his works as addressed to mankind. A " school " arose — 
if that absurd term must still be employed — a school — a system 
of rules — upon the basis of the Shelley who had none. Young 
men innumerable, dazzled with the glare and bewildered with the 
bizarrerie of the divine lightning that flickered through the clouds 
of the Prometheus, had no trouble whatever in heaping up imi- 
tative vapors, but, for the lightning, were content, perforce, with 
its spectrum, in which the bizarrerie appeared without the fire. 
Nor were great and mature minds unimpressed by the contempla- 
tion of a greater and more mature ; and thus gradually were 
interwoven into this school of all Lawlessness — of obscurity, 
quaintness, exaggeration — the misplaced didacticism of Words- 
worth, and the even more preposterously anomalous metaphy- 
sicianism of Coleridge. Matters were now fast verging to their 
worst, and at length, in Tennyson, poetic inconsistency attained its 
extreme. But it was precisely this extreme (for the greatest error 
and the greatest truth are scarcely two points in a circle) — it was 
this extreme which, following the law of all extremes, wrought in 
him — in Tennyson — a natural and inevitable revulsion, leading 
him first to contemn and secondly to investigate his early manner, 
and, finally, to winnow from its magnificent elements the truest 
and purest of all poetical styles. But not even yet is the process 
complete ; and for this reason in part, but chiefly on account of 
the mere fortuitousness of that mental and moral combination 
which shall unite in one person (if ever it shall) the Shelleyan 
abandon, the Tennysonian poetic sense, the most profound in- 
stinct of Art, and the sternest Will properly to blend and vigor- 
ously to control all ; — chiefly, we say, because such combination 
of antagonisms must be purely fortuitous, has the world never 



424 ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT. 

yet seen the noblest of the poems of which it is possible that it 
may be put in possession. 

And yet Miss Barrett has narrowly missed the fulfilment of 
these conditions. Her poetic inspiration is the highest — we can 
conceive nothing more august. Her sense of Art is pure in it- 
self, but has been contaminated by pedantic study of false models 
— a study which has the more easily led her astray, because she 
placed an undue value upon it as rare — as alien to her character 
of woman. The accident of having been long secluded by ill 
health from the world has affected, moreover, in her behalf, what 
an innate recklessness did for Shelley — has imparted to her, if 
not precisely that abandon to which I have referred, at least a 
something that stands well in its stead — a comparative independ- 
ence of men and opinions with which she did not come personally 
in contact — a happy audacity of thought and expression never 
before known in one of her sex. It is, however, this same acci- 
dent of ill health, perhaps, which has invalidated her original 
Will — diverted her from proper individuality of purpose — and 
seduced her into the sin of imitation. Thus, what she might 
have done, we cannot altogether determine. What she has ac- 
tually accomplished is before us. With Tennyson's works beside 
her, and a keen appreciation of them in her soul — appreciation 
too keen to be discriminative ; — with an imagination even more 
vigorous than his, although somewhat less ethereally delicate ; with 
inferior art and more feeble volition ; she has written poems such, 
as he could not write, but such as he, under her conditions of ill 
health and seclusion, would have written during the epoch of his 
pupildom in that school which arose out of Shelley, and from 
which, over a disgustful gulf of utter incongruity and absurdity, 
lit only by miasmatic flashes, into the broad open meadows of 
Natural Art and Divine Genius, he — Tennyson — is at once the 
bridge and the transition. 



R. H. HORNE. 426 



R. H. HORNE.* 

Mr. R. H. Horne, the author of the " Orion," has, of late years, 
acquired a high and extensive home reputation, although, as yet, he 
is only partially known in America. He will be remembered, how- 
ever, as the author of a very well-written Introduction to Black's 
Translation of Schlegel's " Lectures on Dramatic Art and Litera- 
ture," and as a contributor with Wordsworth, Hunt, Miss Barrett, 
and others, to " Chaucer Modernized." He is the author, also, 
of " Cosmo de Medici," of " The Death of Marlowe," and, es- 
pecially, of " Gregory the Seventh," a fine tragedy, prefaced with 
an " Essay on Tragic Influence." " Orion " was originally adver- 
tised to be sold for a farthing ; and, at this price, three large 
editions were actually sold. The fourth edition (a specimen of 
which now lies before us) was issued at a shilling, and also sold. 
A fifth is promised at half a crown ; this likewise, with even a 
sixth at a crown, may be disposed of — partly through the intrin- 
sic merit of the work itself — but chiefly through the ingenious 
novelty of the original price. 

We have been among the earliest readers of Mr. Horne — among 
the most earnest admirers of his high genius ; — for a man of high, 
of the highest genius, he unquestionably is. With an eager wish 
to do justice to his " Gregory the Seventh," we have never yet 
found exactly that opportunity we desired. Meantime, we looked, 
with curiosity, for what the British critics would say of a work 
which, in the boldness of its conception, and in the fresh origin- 
ality of its management, would necessarily fall beyond the routine 
of their customary verbiage. We saw nothing, however, that 
either could or should be understood — nothing, certainly, that 
was worth understanding. The tragedy itself was, unhappily, 
not devoid of the ruling cant of the day, and its critics (that cant 
incarnate) took their cue from some of its infected passages, and 
proceeded forthwith to rhapsody and aesthetics, by way of giving 

* Orion : an Epic Poem in Three Books. By R. H. Horne. Fourth Edition. 
London : Published by J. Miller. 



426 R. H. HORNE. 



a common-sense public an intelligible idea of the book. By the 
" cant of the day " we mean the disgusting practice of putting 
on the airs of an owl, and endeavoring to look miraculously wise ; 
— the affectation of second sight — of a species of ecstatic pre- 
science — of an intensely bathetic penetration into all sorts of 
mysteries, psychological ones in especial ; — an Orphic — an ostrich 
affectation, which buries its head in balderdash, and, seeing noth- 
ing itself, fancies, therefore, that its preposterous carcass is not a 
visible object of derision for the world at large. 

Of " Orion " itself, we have, as yet, seen few notices in the 
British periodicals, and these few are merely repetitions of the old 
jargon. All that has been said for example, might be summed 
up in some such paragraph as this : 

" ' Orion ' is the earnest outpouring of the oneness of the psy- 
chological Man. It has the individuality of the true Singleness. 
It is not to be regarded as a Poem, but as a Work — as a multiple 
Theogony — as a manifestation of the Works and the Days. It 
is a pinion in the Progress — a wheel in the Movement that 
moveth ever and goeth always — a mirror of Self-Inspection, 
held up by the Seer of the Age essential — of the Age in esse — 
for the Seers of the Ages possible — in posse. We hail a brother 
in the work." 

Of the mere opinions of the donkeys who bray thus — of their 
mere dogmas and doctrines, literary, aesthetical, or what not — we 
know little, and, upon our honor, we wish to know less. Occupied, 
Laputically, in their great work of a progress that never progresses, 
we take it for granted, also, that they care as little about ours. 
But whatever the opinions of these people may be — however por- 
tentous the " Idea " which they have been so long threatening to 
" evolve " — we still think it clear that they take a very round- 
about way of evolving it. The use of Language is in the pro- 
mulgation of Thought. If a man — if an Orphicist — or a Seer — 
or whatever else he may choose to call himself, while the rest of 
the world calls him an ass — if this gentleman have an idea which 
he does not understand himself, the best thing he can do is to say 
nothing about it ; for, of course, he can entertain no hope that 
what he, the Seer, cannot comprehend, should be comprehended 
by the mass of common humanity ; but if he have an idea which 



R. H. HORNE. 427 



is actually intelligible to himself, and if be sincerely wishes to ren- 
der it intelligible to others, we then hold it as indisputable that he 
should employ those forms of speech which are the best adapted 
to further his object. He should speak to the people in that peo- 
ple's ordinary tongue. He should arrange words, such as are 
habitually employed for the several preliminary and introductory 
ideas to be conveyed—he should arrange them in collocations such 
as those in which we are accustomed to see those w T ords arranged. 

But to all this the Orphicist thus replies : " I am a Seer. My 
Idea — the idea which by providence I am especially commissioned 
to evolve — is one so vast — so novel — that ordinary words, in or- 
dinary collocations, will be insufficient for its comfortable evolu- 
tion." Very true. We grant the vastness of the Idea — it is 
manifested in the sucking of the thumb — but, then, if ordinary lan- 
guage be insufficient — ordinary language which men understand 
— a fortiori will be insufficient that inordinate language which no 
man has ever understood, and which any well-educated baboon 
would blush in being accused of understanding. The "Seer," 
therefore, has no resource but to oblige mankind by holding his 
tongue, and suffering his Idea to remain quietly " unevolved," 
until some Mesmeric mode of intercommunication shall be invent- 
ed, whereby the antipodal brains of the Seer and of the man of 
Common Sense shall be brought into the necessary rapport. 
Meantime we earnestly ask if bread-and-butter be the vast Idea 
in question — if bread-and-butter be any portion of this vast Idea ; 
for we have often observed that when a Seer has to speak of 
even so usual a thing as bread-and-butter, he can never be in- 
duced to mention it outright. He will, if you choose, say any- 
thing and everything but bread-and-butter. He will consent to 
hint at buckwheat cake. He may even accommodate you so far 
as to insinuate oatmeal porridge — but, if bread-and-butter be 
really the matter intended, we never yet met the Orphicist who 
could get out the three individual words " bread-and-butter." 

We have already said that " Gregory the Seventh " was un- 
happily infected with the customary cant of the day — the cant 
of the muddle-pates who dishonor a profound and ennobling 
philosophy by styling themselves transcendentalists. In fact, 
there are few highly sensitive or imaginative intellects for which 



428 R. H. HORNE. 



the vortex of mysticism, in any shape, has not an almost irresisti- 
ble influence, on account of the shadowy confines which separate 
the Unknown from the Sublime. Mr. Home, then is, in some 
measure, infected. The success of his previous works has led him 
to attempt, zealously, the production of a poem which should be 
worthy his high powers. We have no doubt that he revolved 
carefully in mind a variety of august conceptions, and from these 
thoughtfully selected what his judgment, rather than what his 
impulses, designated as the noblest and the best. In a word, he 
has weakly yielded his own poetic sentiment of the poetic — yielded 
it, in some degree, to the pertinacious opinion, and talk, of a cer- 
tain junto by which he is surrounded — a junto of dreamers whose 
absolute intellect may, perhaps, compare with his own very much 
after the fashion of an ant-hill with the Andes. By this talk — 
by its continuity rather than by any other quality it possessed — 
he has been badgered into the attempt at commingling the obsti- 
nate oils and waters of Poetry and of Truth. He has been so 
far blinded as to permit himself to imagine that a maudlin philoso- 
phy (granting it to be worth enforcing) could be enforced by 
poetic imagery, and illustrated by the jingling of rhythm ; or, 
more unpardonably, he has been induced to believe that a poem, 
whose single object is the creation of Beauty — the novel colloca- 
tion of old forms of the Beautiful and of the Sublime — could be 
advanced by the abstractions of a maudlin philosophy. 

But the question is not even this. It is not whether it be not 
possible to introduce didacticism, with effect, into a poem, or 
possible to introduce poetical images and measures, with effect, 
into a didactic essay. To do either the one or the other, would 
be merely to surmount a difficulty — would be simply a feat of 
literary sleight of hand. But the true question is, whether the 
author who shall attempt either feat, will not be laboring at a dis- 
advantage — will not be guilty of a fruitless and wasteful expendi- 
ture of energy. In minor poetical efforts, we may not so impera- 
tively demand an adherence to the true poetical thesis. We 
permit trifling to some extent, in a work which we consider a 
trifle at best. Although we agree, for example, with Coleridge, 
that poetry and passion are discordant, yet we are willing to per- 
mit Tennyson to bring, to the intense passion which prompted his 



R. H. HORNE. 429 



" Locksley Hall/' the aid of that terseness and pungency which are 
derivable from rhythm and from rhyme. The effect he produces, 
however, is a purely passionate, and not, unless in detached 
passages of this magnificent philippic, a properly poetic effect. 
His " (Enone," on the other hand, exalts the soul not into passion, 
but into a conception of pure beauty, which in its elevation — its 
calm and intense rapture — has in it a foreshadowing of the future 
and spiritual life, and as far transcends earthly passion as the holy 
radiance of the sun does the glimmering and feeble phosphores- 
cence of the glow-worm. His " Morte D 'Arthur " is in the same 
majestic vein. The "Sensitive Plant" of Shelly is in the same 
sublime spirit. Nor, if the passionate poems of Byron excite 
more intensely a greater number of readers than either the 
" (Enone " or the " Sensitive Plant" — does this indisputable fact 
prove anything more than that the majority of mankind are more 
susceptible of the impulses of passion than of the impressions of 
beauty. Readers do exist, however, and always will exist, who, 
to hearts of maddening fervor, unite, in perfection, the sentiment 
of the beautiful — that divine sixth sense which is yet so faintly 
understood — that sense which phrenology has attempted to em- 
body in its ogan of ideality — that sense which is the basis of all 
Cousin's dreams — that sense which speaks of God through his 
purest, if not his sole attribute — which proves, and which alone 
proves his existence. 

To readers such as these — and only to such as these — must be 
left the decision of what the true Poesy is. And these — with no 
hesitation — will decide that the origin of Poetry lies in a thirst 
for a wilder Beauty than Earth supplies — that Poetry itself is the 
imperfect effort to quench this immortal thirst by novel combina- 
tions of beautiful forms (collocations of forms) physical or spiritual, 
and that this thirst when even partially allayed — this sentiment 
when even feebly meeting response — produces emotion to which 
all other human emotions are vapid and insignificant. 

We shall now be fully understood. If, with Coleridge, who, 
however erring at times, was precisely the mind fitted to decide a 
question such as this — if, with him, we reject passion from the 
true — from the pure poetry — if we reject even passion — if we 
discard as feeble, as unworthy the high spirituality of the theme, 



430 R. H. HORNE. 



(which has its origin in a sense of the Godhead,) if we dismiss 
even the nearly divine emotion of human love — that emotion 
which, merely to name, causes the pen to tremble — with how 
much greater reason shall we dismiss all else ? And yet there 
are men who would mingle with the august theme the merest 
questions of expediency — the cant topics of the day — the dog- 
gerel aesthetics of the time — who would trammel the soul in its 
flight to an ideal Helusion, by the quirks and quibbles of chopped 
logic. There are men who do this — lately there are a set of men 
who make a practice of doing this — and who defend it on the 
score of the advancement of what they suppose to be truth. 
Truth is, in its own essence, sublime — but her loftiest sublimity, 
as derived from man's clouded and erratic reason, is valueless — 
is pulseless — is utterly ineffective when brought into comparison 
with the unerring sense of which we speak ; yet grant this truth 
to be all which its seekers and worshippers pretend — they forget 
that it is not truth, per se, which is made their thesis, but an ar- 
gumentation, often maudlin and pedantic, always shallow and un- 
satisfactory (as from the mere inadaptation of the vehicle it must 
be) by which this truth, in casual and indeterminate glimpses, is 
— or is not — rendered manifest. 

We have said that, in minor poetical efforts, we may tolerate 
some deflection from the true poetical thesis ; but when a man of 
the highest powers sets himself seriously to the task of construct- 
ing what shall be most worthy those powers, we expect that he 
shall so choose his theme as to render it certain that he labor not 
at disadvantage. We regret to see any trivial or partial imperfec- 
tion of detail ; but we grieve deeply when we detect any radical 
error of conception. 

In setting about " Orion," Mr. Home proposed to himself, (in 
accordance with the views of his junto) to " elaborate a morality " 
— he ostensibly proposed this to himself — for, in the depths of 
his heart, we knoiv that he wished all juntos and all moralities in 
Erebus. In accordance with the notions of his set, however, he 
felt a species of shamefacedness in not making the enforcement 
of some certain dogmas or doctrines (questionable or unquestion- 
able) about Progress, the obvious or apparent object of his poem. 
This shamefacedness is the cue to the concluding sentence of the 



R. H. HORNE. 431 



Preface. " Meantime, the design of this poem of * Orion ' is far 
from being intended as a mere echo or reflection of the past, and 
is, in itself, and in other respects, a novel experiment upon the 
mind of a nation." Mr. Home conceived, in fact, that to com- 
pose a poem merely for that poem's sake — and to acknowledge 
such to be his purpose — would be to subject himself to the charge 
of imbecility — of triviality — of deficiency in the true dignity and 
force ; but, had he listened to the dictates of his own soul, he 
could not have failed to perceive, at once, that under the sun there 
exists no work more intrinsically noble, than this very poem writ" 
ten solely for the poems sake. 

But let us regard " Orion " as it is. It has an under and an 
upper current of meaning ; in other words, it is an allegory. But 
the poet's sense of fitness (which, under no circumstances of mere 
conventional opinion, could be more than half subdued) has so 
far softened this allegory as to keep it, generally, well subject to 
the ostensible narrative. The purport of the moral conveyed is 
by no means clear — showing conclusively that the heart of the 
poet was not with it. It vacillates. At one time a certain set of 
opinions predominate — then another. We may generalize the 
subject, however, by calling it a homily against supineness or 
apathy in the cause of human progress, and in favor of energetic 
action for the good of the race. This is precisely the idea of the 
present school of canters. How feebly the case is made out in 
the poem — how insufficient has been all Mr. Home's poetical 
rhetoric in convincing even himself — may be gleaned from the un- 
usual bombast, rigmarole, and mystification of the concluding 
paragraph, in which he has thought it necessary to say something 
very profound, by way of putting the sting to his epigram, — the 
point to his moral. The words put us much in mind of the " non- 
sense verses " of Du Bartas. 

And thus, in the end each soul may to itself, 
"With truth before it as its polar guide, 
Become both Time and Nature, whose fixt paths 
Are spiral, and when lost will find new stars, 
And in the universal Movement join. 

The upper current of the theme is based upon the various 
Greek fables about Orion. The author, in his brief preface, speaks 
about "writing from an old Greek fable " — but his story is, more 



432 R. H. HORNE. 



properly, a very judicious selection and modification of a great 
variety of Greek and Roman fables concerning Orion and other 
personages with whom these fables bring Orion in collision. And 
here we have only to object that the really magnificent abilities 
of Mr. Home might have been better employed in an entirely 
original conception. The story he tells is beautiful indeed, — and 
nil tetigit, certainly, quod non ornavit — but our memories — our 
classic recollections are continually at war with his claims to re- 
gard, and we too often find ourselves rather speculating upon 
what he might have done, than admiring what he has really ac- 
complished. 

The narrative, as our poet has arranged it runs nearly thus : 
Orion, hunting on foot amid the mountains of Chios, encounters 
Artemis (Diana) with her train. The goddess, at first indignant 
at the giant's intrusion upon her grounds, becomes, in the second 
place, enamored. Her pure love spiritualizes the merely animal 
nature of Orion, but does not render him happy. He is filled with 
vague aspirations and desires. He buries himself in sensual pleas- 
ures. In the mad dreams of intoxication, he beholds a vision of 
Merope, the daughter of OEnopion, king of Chios. She is the type 
of physical beauty. She cries in his ear, " Depart from Artemis ! 
She loves thee not — thou art too full of earth." Awaking, he 
seeks the love of Merope. It is returned. (Enopion, dreading the 
giant and his brethren, yet scorning his pretensions, temporizes. 
He consents to bestow upon Orion the hand of Merope, on condi- 
tion of the island being cleared, within six days, of its savage 
beasts and serpents. Orion, seeking the aid of his brethren, ac- 
complishes the task. (Enopion again hesitates. Enraged, the 
giants make war upon him, and carry off the princess. In a remote 
grove Orion lives, in bliss, with his earthly love. From this deliri- 
um of happiness, he is aroused by the vengeance of (Enopion, who 
causes him to be surprised while asleep, and deprived of sight. 
The princess, being retaken, immediately forgets and deserts her 
lover, who, in his wretchedness, seeks, at the suggestion of a 
shepherd, the aid of Eos (Aurora) who, also becoming enamored 
of him, restores his sight. The love of Eos, less earthly than 
that of Merope, less cold than that of Artemis, fully satisfies his 
soul. He is at length happy. But the jealousy of Artemis de- 



R. H. HORNE. 433 



stroys him. She pierces him with her arrows while in the very act 
of gratefully renovating her temple at Delos. In despair, Eos flies 
to Artemis, reproves her, represents to her the baseness of her 
jealousy and revenge, softens her, and obtains her consent to 
unite with herself — with Eos — in a prayer to Zeus (Jupiter) for 
the restoration of the giant to life. The prayer is heard. Orion 
is not only restored to life, but rendered immortal, and placed 
among the constellations, where he enjoys forever the pure affec- 
tion of Eos, and becomes extinguished, each morning, in her rays. 
In ancient mythology, the giants are meant to typify various 
energies of Nature. Pursuing, we suppose, this idea, Mr. Home 
has made his own giants represent certain principles of human 
action or passion. Thus Orion himself is the Worker or Builder, 
and is the type of Action or Movement itself — but, in various 
portions of the poem, this allegorical character is left out of sight, 
and that of speculative philosophy takes its place ; a mere con- 
sequence of the general uncertainty of purpose, which is the 
chief defect of the work. Sometimes we even find Orion a De- 
stroyer in place of a Builder — as, for example, when he de- 
stroys the grove about the temple of Artemis, at Delos. Here 
he usurps the proper allegorical attribute of Rhexergon, (the 
second of the seven giants named,) who is the Breaker-down, ty- 
pifying the Revolutionary Principle. Autarces, the third, repre- 
sents the Mob, or, more strictly, Waywardness — Capricious 
Action. Harpax, the fourth, serves for Rapine — Briastor, the 
fifth, for Brute Force — Encolyon, the sixth, the " Chainer of the 
Wheel," for Conservatism — and Akinetos, the seventh, and most 
elaborated, for Apathy. He is termed " The Great Unmoved,'* 
and in his mouth is put all the " worldly wisdom," or selfishness, 
of the tale. The philosophy of Akinetos is, that no merely hu- 
man exertion has any appreciable effect upon the Movement ; and 
it is amusing to perceive how this great Truth (for most sincerely 
do we hold it to be such) speaks out from the real heart of the 
poet, through his Akinetos, in spite of all endeavor to overthrow 
it by the example of the brighter fate of Orion. 

The death of Akinetos is a singularly forcible and poetic con- 
ception, and will serve to show how the giants are made to perish, 
generally, during the story, in agreement with their allegorical 

Vol. III.— 19 



484 R. H. HORNE. 



natures. The " Great Unmoved " quietly seats himself in a cave 

after the death of all his brethren, except Orion. 

Thus Akinetos sat from day to day, 

Absorbed in indolent sublimity, 

Reviewing thoughts and knowledge o'er and o'er ; 

And now he spake, now sang unto himself, 

Now sank to brooding silence. From above, 

While passing, Time the rock touch'd, and it oozed 

Petrific drops — gently at first and slow. 

Reclining lonely in his fixed repose, 

The Great Unmoved unconsciously became 

Attached to that he pressed ; and soon a part 

Of the rock. Ihere clung iK excrescence, till strong hands, 

Descended from Orion, made large roads, 

And built steep walls, squaring down rocks for use. 

The italicized conclusion of this fine passage affords an instance, 
however, of a very blameable concision, too much affected through- 
out the poem. 

In the deaths of Autarces, Harpax, and Encolyon, we recognise 

the same exceeding vigor of conception. These giants conspire 

against Orion, who seeks the aid of Artemis, who, in her turn, 

seeks the assistance of Phoibos (Phoebus.) The conspirators are 

in a cave, with Orion. 

Now Phoibus thro' the cave 
Sent a broad ray ! and lo ! the solar beam 
Pilled the great cave with radiance equable 
And not a cranny held one speck of shade. 
A moony halo round Orion came, 
As of some pure protecting influence, 
While with intense light glared the walls and roof, 
The heat increasing. The three giants stood 
With glazing eyes, fixed. Terribly the light 
Beat on the dazzled stone, and the cave hummed 
With reddening heat, till the red hair and beard 
Of Harpax showed no difference from the rest, 
Which once were iron-black. The sullen walls 
Then smouldered down to steady oven heat, 
Like that with care attain'd when bread has ceased 
Its steaming and displays an angry tan. 
The appalled faces of the giants showed 
Full consciousness of their immediate doom. 
And soon the cave a potter's furnace glowM 
Or kiln for largest bricks, and thus remained 
The while Orion, in his halo clasped 
By some invisible power, beheld the clay 
Of these his early friends change. Life was gone. 
Now sank the heat — the cave-walls lost their glare, 
The red lights faded, and the halo pale 
Around him, into chilly air expanded. 



R. H. HORNE. 435 



There stood the three great images, in hue 

Of chalky white and red, like those strange shapes 

In Egypt's ancient tombs ; but presently 

Each visage and each form with cracks and flaws 

Was seamed, and the lost countenance brake up, 

As, with brief toppling, forward prone they fell. 

The deaths of Rhexergon and Biastor seem to discard (and 
this we regret not) the allegorical meaning altogether, but are re- 
lated with even more exquisite richness and delicacy of imagina- 
tion, than those of the other giants. Upon this occasion it is the 
jealousy of Artemis which destroys. 

But with the eve 

Fatigue o'ercame the giants, and they slept. 

Dense were the rolling clouds, starless the glooms ; 

But o'er a narrow rift, once drawn apart, 

Showing a field remote of violet hue, 

The high Moon floated, and her downward gleam 

Shone on the upturned giant faces. Rigid 

Each upper feature, loose the nether jaw ; 

Their arms cast wide with open palms ; their chests 

Heaving like some large engine. Near them lay 

Their bloody clubs, with dust and hair begrimed, 

Their spears and girdles, and the long-noosed thongs. 

Artemis vanished ; all again was dark. 

With day's first streak Orion rose, and loudly 

To his companions called. ■ But still they slept. 

Again he shouted ; yet no limb they stirred, 

Tho' scarcely seven strides distant. He approached, 

And found the spot, so sweet with clover flower 

When they had cast them down, was now arrayed 

With many-headed poppies, like a crowd 

Of dusky Ethiops in a magic cirque 

Which had sprung up beneath them in the night, 

And all entranced the air. 

There are several minor defects in " Orion," and we may as 

well mention them here. We sometimes meet with an instance 

of bad taste in a revolting picture or image ; for example, at page 

59, of this edition : 

Naught fearing, swift, brimful of raging life, 
Stiffning they lay in pools of jellied gore. 

Sometimes — indeed very often — we encounter an altogether 
purposeless oddness or foreignness of speech. For example, at 
page *78 : 

As in Dodona once, ere driven thence 

By Zeus for that Rhexergon burnt some oaks. 



436 R. H. HORNE. 



Mr. Home will find it impossible to assign a good reason for 

not here using " because." 

Pure vaguenesses of speech abound. For example, page 89 : 

one central heart "wherein 

Time beats twin pulses with Humanity. 

Now and then sentences are rendered needlessly obscure through 

mere involution — as at page 103 : 

Star-rays that first played o'er my blinded orbs, 
E'en as they glance above the lids of sleep, 
Who else had never known surprise, nor hope, 
Nor useful action. 

Here the " who " has no grammatical antecedent, and would 
naturally be referred to sleep ; whereas it is intended for " me," 
understood, or involved, in the pronoun " my ;" as if the sentence 
were written thus — " rays that first played o'er the blinded orbs 
of me, who, &c." It is useless to dwell upon so pure an affecta- 
tion. 

The versification throughout is, generally, of a very remarkable 

excellence. At times, however, it is rough, to no purpose ; as at 

page 44 : 

And ever tended to some central point 

In some place — nought more could I understand. 

And here, at page 81 : 

The shadow of a stag stoops to the stream 

Swift rolling toward the cataract and drinks deeply. 

The above is an unintentional and false Alexandrine — including 

a foot too much, and that a trochee in place of an iambus. But 

here, at page 106, we have the utterly unjustifiable anomaly of 

half a foot too little : 

And Eos ever rises circling 

The varied regions of mankind, &c. 

All these are mere inadvertences, of course ; for the general hand- 
ling of the rhythm shows the profound metrical sense of the poet. 
He is, perhaps, somewhat too fond of " making the sound an echo 
to the sense." " Orion " embodies some of the most remarkable 
instances of this on record ; but if smoothness — if the true rhythm 
of a verse be sacrificed, the sacrifice is an error. The effect is only 
a beauty, we think, where no sacrifice is made in its behalf. It 
will be found possible to reconcile all the objects in view. No- 
thing can justify such lines as this, at page 69 : 



R. H. HORNE. 431 



As snake-songs midst stone hollows thus has taught me. 

We might urge, as another minor objection, that all the giants 
are made to speak in the same manner — with the same phraseol- 
ogy. Their characters are broadly distinctive, while their words 
are identical in spirit. There is sufficient individuality of senti- 
ment, but little, or none, of language. 

We must object, too, to the personal and political allusions — 
to the Corn-Law question, for example — to Wellington's statue, 
&c. These things, of course, have no business in a poem. 

We will conclude our fault-finding with the remark that, as a 
consequence of the one radical error of conception upon which we 
have commented at length, the reader's attention, throughout, is 
painfully diverted. He is always pausing, amid poetical beauties, 
in the expectation of detecting among them some philosophical, 
allegorical moral. Of course, he does not fully, because he can- 
not uniquely, appreciate the beauties. The absolute necessity of 
re-perusing the poem, in order thoroughly to comprehend it, is 
also, most surely, to be regretted, and arises, likewise, from the 
one radical sin. 

But of the beauties of this most remarkable poem, what shall 
we say ? And here we find it a difficult task to be calm. And 
yet we have never been accused of enthusiastic encomium. It is 
our deliberate opinion that, in all that regards the loftiest and 
holiest attributes of the true Poetry, " Orion " has never been ex- 
celled. Indeed, we feel strongly inclined to say that it has never 
been equalled. Its imagination — that quality which is all in all — 
is of the most refined — the most elevating — the most august 
character. And here we deeply regret that the necessary limits 
of this review will prevent us from entering, at length, into spe- 
cification. In reading the poem, we marked passage after pas- 
sage for extract — but, in the end, we found that we had marked 
nearly every passage in the book. We can now do nothing more 
than select a few. This, from page 3, introduces Orion himself, 
and we quote it, not only as an instance of refined and picturesque 
imagination, but as evincing the high artistical skill with which a 
scholar in spirit can paint an elaborate picture by a few brief 
touches. 



488 R. H. HORNE. 



The scene in front two sloping mountains' sides 
Displayed ; in shadow one and one in light. 
The loftiest on its summit now sustained 
The sun-beams, raying like a mighty wheel 
Half seen, which left the forward surface dark 
In its full breadth of shade ; the coming sun 
Hidden as yet behind ; the other mount, 
Slanting transverse, swept with an eastward face, 
Catching the golden light. Now while the peal 
Of the ascending chase told that the rout 
Still midway rent the thickets, suddenly 
Along the broad and sunny slope appeared 
The shadow of a stag that fled across 
Followed by a giant's shadow with a spear. 

These shadows are those of the coming Orion and his game. 
But who can fail to appreciate the intense beauty of the herald- 
ing shadows ? Nor is this all. This " Hunter of shadows, he 
himself a shade," is made symbolical, or suggestive, throughout 
the poem, of the speculative character of Orion ; and occasionally, 
of his pursuit of visionary happiness. For example, at page 81, 
Orion, possessed of Merope, dwells with her in a remote and 
dense grove of cedars. Instead of directly describing his attained 
happiness — his perfected bliss — the poet, with an exalted sense 
of Art, for which we look utterly in vain in any other poem, merely 
introduces the image of the tamed or subdued shadow-stag, quietly 
browsing and drinking beneath the cedars. 

There, underneath the boughs, mark where the gleam 

Of sun-rise thro' the roofing's chasm is thrown 

Upon a grassy plot below, whereon 

The shadow of a stag stoops to the stream, 

Swift rolling toward the cataract, and drinks. 

Throughout the day unceasingly it drinks, 

While ever and anon the nightingale, 

Not waiting for the evening, swells his hymn — 

His one sustained and heaven-aspiring tone — ■ 

And when the sun hath vanished utterly, 

Arm over arm the cedars spread their shade, 

With arching wrist and long extended hands, 

And grave-ward fingers lengthening in the moon. 

Above that shadowy stag whose antlers still 

Hung o'er the stream. 

There is nothing more richly — more weirdly — more chastely — 
more sublimely imaginative — in the wide realm of poetical liter- 
ature. It will be seen that we have enthusiasm — but we reserve 
\t for pictures such as this, 



R, H. HORNE. 439 



At page 62, Orion, his brethren dead, is engaged alone in ex- 
tirpating the beasts from Chios. In the passages we quote, ob- 
serve, in the beginning, the singular lucidness of detail ; the ar- 
rangement of the barriers, &c., by which the hunter accomplishes 
his purpose, is given in a dozen lines of verse, with far more per- 
spicuity than ordinary writers could give it in as many pages of 
prose. In this species of narration Mr. Home is approached only 
by Moore in his " Alciphron." In the latter portions of our ex- 
tract, observe the vivid picturesqueness of the description. 

Four days remain. Fresh trees he felled and wove 

More barriers and fences ; inaccessible 

To fiercest charge of droves, and to o'erleap 

Impossible. These walls he so arranged 

That to a common centre each should force 

The flight of those pursued ; and from that centre 

Diverged three outlets. One, the wide expanse 

Which from the rocks and inland forests led ; 

One was the clear-skyed windy gap above 

A precipice ; the third, a long ravine 

Which through steep slopes, down to the seashore ran 

Winding, and then direct into the sea. 

Two days remain. Orion, in each hand 

Waving a torch, his course at night began, 

Through wildest haunts and lairs of savage beasts. 

With long-drawn howl, before him trooped the wolves — 

The panthers, terror-stricken, and the bears 

With wonder and gruff rage ; from desolate crags, 

Leering hyenas, griffin, hippogrif, 

Skulked, or sprang madly, as the tossing brands 

Flashed through the midnight nooks and hollows cold, 

Sudden as fire from flint ; o'er crashing thickets, 

With crouched head and curled fangs dashed the wild boar, 

Gnashing forth on with reckless impulses, 

While the clear-purposed fox crept closely down 

Into the underwood, to let the storm, 

Whate'er its cause, pass over. Through dark fens, 

Marshes, green rushy swamps, and margins reedy, 

Orion held his way — and rolling shapes 

Of serpent and of dragon moved before him 

With high-reared crests, swan-like yet terrible, 

And often looking back with gem-like eyes. 

All night Orion urged his rapid course 
In the vex'd rear of the swift-droving din, 
And when the dawn had peered, the monsters all 
Were hemmed in barriers. These he now o'erheaped 
With fuel through the day, and when again 
Night darkened, and the sea a gulf-like voice 
Sent forth, the barriers at all points he fired, 
Mid prayers to Hephsestos and his Ocean-Sire. 



440 R H. HORNE. 



Soon as the flames had eaten out a gap 

In the great barrier fronting the ravine 

That ran down to the sea, Orion grasped 

Two blazing boughs ; one high in air he raised, 

The other, with its roaring foliage trailed 

Behind him as he sped. Onward the droves 

Of frantic creatures with one impulse rolled 

Before this night-devouring thing of flames, 

With multitudinous voice and downward sweep 

Into the sea, which now first knew a tide, 

And, ere they made one effort to regain 

The shore, had caught them in its flowing arms, 

And bore them past all hope. The living mass, 

Dark heaving o'er the waves resistlessly, 

At length, in distance, seemed a circle small, 

Midst which one creature in the centre rose, 

Conspicuous in the long, red quivering gleams 

That from the dying brands streamed o'er the waves. 

It was the oldest dragon of the fens, 

Whose forky flag-wings and horn-crested head 

O'er crags and marshes regal sway had held; 

And now he rose up like an embodied curse, 

From all the doomed, fast sinking — some just sunk — 

Looked landward o'er the sea, and flapped his vans, 

Until Poseidon drew them swirling down. 

Poseidon (Neptune) is Orion's father, and lends him his aid. 
The first line italicized is an example of sound made echo to 
sense. The rest we have merely emphasized as peculiarly imagi- 
native. 

At page 9, Orion thus describes a palace built by him for He- 
phsestos (Vulcan.) 

But, ere a shadow-hunter I became — 

A dreamer of strange dreams by day and night — 

For him I built a palace underground, 

Of iron, black and rough as his own hands. 

Deep in the groaning disemboweled earth, 

The tower-broad pillars and huge stanchions, 

And slant supporting wedges I set up, 

Aided by the Cyclops who obeyed my voice, 

Which through the metal fabric rang and pealed 

In orders echoing far, like thunder-dreams. 

With arches, galleries and domes all carved — 

So that great figures started from the roof 

And lofty coignes, or sat and downward gazed 

On those who stood below and gazed above — 

I filled it ; in the centre framed a hall ; 

Central in that, a throne ; and for the light, 

Forged mighty hammers that should rise and fall 

On slanted, rocks of granite and of flint, 

Worked by a torrent, for whose passage down 

A chasm I hewed. And here the God could take, 



R. H. HORNE. 441 



Midst showery sparks and swathes of broad gold fire 
His lone repose, lulled by the sounds he loved : 
Or, castiny back the hammer-heads till they choked 
The water's course, enjoy, if so he wished, 
Midnight tremendous, silence, and iron sleep. 

The description of the Hell in " Paradise Lost " is altogether 
inferior in graphic effect, in originality, in expression, in the true 
imagination — to these magnificent — to these unparalleled passages. 
For this assertion there are tens of thousands who will condemn 
us as heretical ; but there are a " chosen few " who will feel, in 
their inmost souls, the simple truth of the assertion. The former 
class would at least be silent, could they form even a remote con- 
ception of that contempt with which we hearken to their conven- 
tional jargon. 

We have room for no further extracts of length ; but we refer 
the reader who shall be so fortunate as to procure a copy of 
" Orion," to a passage at page 22, commencing 

One day at noontide, when the chase was done. 

It is descriptive of a group of lolling hounds, intermingled with 

sylvans, fawns, nymphs, and oceanides. We refer him also to 

page 25, where Orion, enamored of the naked beauty of Artemis, 

is repulsed and frozen by her dignity. These lines end thus : 

And ere the last collected shape he saw 
Of Artemis, dispersing fast amid 
Dense vapory clouds, the aching wintriness 
Had risen to his teeth, and fixed his eyes, 
Like glistening stones in the congealing air. 

We refer, especially, too, to the description of Love, at page 29 ; 
to that of a Bacchanalian orgie, at page 34 ; to that of drought 
succeeded by rain, at page 70 ; and to that of the palace of Eos, 
at page 104. 

Mr. Home has a very peculiar and very delightful faculty of 
enforcing, or giving vitality to a picture, by some one vivid and 
intensely characteristic point or touch. He seizes the most salient 
feature of his theme, and makes this feature convey the whole. 
The combined naivete and picturesqueness of some of the pas- 
sages thus enforced, cannot be sufficiently admired. For ex- 
ample : 

The archers soon 
With bow-arm forward thrust, on all sides twanged 
Around, above, below. 

19* 



442 R. H. HORNE. 



Now, it is this thrusting forward of the bow-arm which is the 
idiosyncrasy of the action of a mass of archers. Again : Rhex- 
ergon and his friends endeavor to persuade Akinetos to be king. 
Observe the silent refusal of Akinetos — the peculiar passiveness 
of his action — if we may be permitted the paradox. 

" Rise, therefore, Akinetos, thou art king." 
So saying, in his hand he placed a spear. 
As though against a wall ' were sent aslant, 
Flatly the long spear fell upon the ground. 

Here again : Merope departs from Chios in a ship. 

And, as it sped along, she closely pressed 

The rich globes of her bosom on the side 

O'er which she bent with those black eyes, and gazed 

Into the sea that fled beneath her face. 

The fleeing of the sea beneath the face of one who gazes into 
it from a ship's side, is the idiosyncrasy of the action — of the sub- 
ject. It is that which chiefly impresses the gazer. 

We conclude with some brief quotations at random, which we 
shall not pause to classify. Their merits need no demonstration. 
They gleam with the purest imagination. They abound in pic- 
turesqueness — force — happily chosen epithets, each in itself a 
picture. They are redolent of all for which a poet will value a 
poem. 

— her silver sandals glanc'd i' the rays, 
As doth a lizard playing on a hilL 
And on the spot where she that instant stood 
Naught but the bent and quivering grass was seen. 

Above the Isle of Chios, night by night, 

The clear moon lingered ever on her course 

Covering the forest foliage, where it swept 

In its unbroken breadth along the slopes, 

With placid silver ; edging leaf and trunk 

Where gloom clung deep around ; but chiefly sought 

With melancholy splendor to illume 

The darkmouthed caverns where Orion lay, 

Dreaming among his kinsmen. 

The ocean realm below, and all its caves 
And bristling vegetation, plant and flower, 
And forests in their dense petrific shade 
Where the tides moan for sleep that never comes. 

A fawn, who on a quiet green knoll sat 
Somewhat apart, sang a melodious ode, 
Made rich by harmonies of hidden strings. 



R. H. HORNE. 443 



Autarces seized a satyr, with intent, 
Despite his writhing freaks aud furious face, 
To dash him on a gong, but that amidst 
The struggling mass Encolyon thrust a pine, 
Heavy and black as Charon's ferrying pole, 
O'er which they, like a bursting billow, fell 

then round the blaze, 

. Their shadows brandishing afar and athwart, 
Over the level space and up the hills, 
Six giants held portentous dance 

Ins safe return 

To corporal sense, by shaking off these nets 
Of moonbeams from his soul 

old memories 

Slumbrously hung above the purple line 
Of distance, to the East, while odorously 
Glistened the tear-drops of a new fall'n shower. .... 

Sing on ! 
Sing on, great tempest ! in the darkness sing ! 
Thy madness is a music that brings calm 
Into my central soul ; and from its waves, 
That now with joy begin to heave and gush, 
The burning image of all life's desire, 
Like an absorbing, fire breathed, phantom god, 
Rises and floats ! here touching on the foam, 
There hovering o'er it ; ascending swift 
Starward, then swooping down the hemisphere 
Upon the lengthening javelins of the blast /. . . 

Now a sound we heard, 
Like to some well-known voice in prayer ; and next 
An iron clang that seemed to break great bonds 
Beneath the earth, shook us to conscious life 

It is Oblivion ! In his hand — though naught 
Knows he of this — a dusky purple flower 
Droops over its tall stem. Again ! ah see ! 
He wanders into mist and now is lost ! — 
"Within his brain what lovely realms of death 
Are pictured, and what knowledge through the doors 
Of his forgetfulness of all the earth 
A path may gain ? 

But we are positively forced to conclude. It was our design 
to give " Orion" a careful and methodical analysis — thus to bring 
clearly forth its multitudinous beauties to the eye of the American 
public. Our limits have constrained us to treat it in an imperfect 
and cursory manner. We have had to content ourselves chiefly 
with assertion, where our original purpose was to demonstrate. 
We have left unsaid a hundred things which a well-grounded en- 



444 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

thusiasm would have prompted us to say. One thing however, 
we must and will say, in conclusion. " Orion " will be admitted, 
by every man of genius, to be one of the noblest, if not the very 
noblest poetical work of the age. Its defects are trivial and con- 
ventional — its beauties intrinsic and supreme. 



THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.* 

Macaulay has obtained a reputation which, although deserved- 
ly great, is yet in a remarkable measure undeserved. The few 
who regard him merely as a terse, forcible and logical writer, full 
of thought, and abounding in original views, often sagacious and 
never otherwise than admirably expressed — appear to us precisely 
in the right. The many who look upon him as not only all this, 
but as a comprehensive and profound thinker, little prone to error, 
err essentially themselves. The source of the general mistake lies 
in a very singular consideration — yet in one upon which we do not 
remember ever to have heard a word of comment. We allude to 
a tendency in the public mind towards logic for logic's sake — a 
liability to confound the vehicle with the conveyed — an aptitude 
to be so dazzled by the luminousness with which an idea is set 
forth, as to mistake it for the luminousness of the idea itself. The 
error is one exactly analogous with that which leads the immature 
poet to think himself sublime wherever he is obscure, because ob- 
scurity is a source of the sublime — thus confounding obscurity of 
expression with the expression of obscurity. In the case of 
Macaulay — and we may say, en passant, of our own Channing — 
we assent to what he says, too often because we so very clearly 
understand what it is that he intends to say. Comprehending 
vividly the points and the sequence of his argument, we fancy 
that we are concurring in the argument itself. It is not every 
mind which is at once able to analyze the satisfaction it receives 

* " Critical and Miscellaneous Essays." By T. Babington Macaulay. Ca- 
rey & Hart : Philadelphia. 



THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 445 

from such Essays as we see here. If it were merely beauty of 
style for which they were distinguished — if they were remarkable 
only for rhetorical flourishes — we would not be apt to estimate 
these flourishes at more than their due value. We would not 
agree with the doctrines of the essayist on account of the ele- 
gance with which they were urged. On the contrary, we would 
be inclined to disbelief. But when all ornament save that of sim- 
plicity is disclaimed — when we are attacked by precision of lan- 
guage, by perfect accuracy of expression, by directness and single- 
ness of thought, and above all by a logic the most rigorously 
close and consequential — it is hardly a matter for wonder that 
nine of us out of ten are content to rest in the gratification thus 
received as in the gratification of absolute truth. 

Of the terseness and simple vigor of Macaulay's style it is un- 
necessary to point out instances. Every one will acknowledge his 
merits on this score. His exceeding closeness of logic, however, 
is more especially remarkable. With this he sutlers nothing to 
interfere. Here, for example, is a sentence in which, to preserve 
entire the chain of his argument — to leave no minute gap which 
the reader might have to fill up with thought — he runs into most 
unusual tautology. 

" The books and traditions of a sect may contain, mingled with 
propositions strictly theological, other propositions, purporting to 
rest on the same authority, which relate to physics. If new dis- 
coveries should throw discredit on the physical propositions, the 
theological propositions, unless they can be separated from the 
physical propositions, will share in their discredit." 

These things are very well in their way ; but it is indeed ques- 
tionable whether they do not appertain rather to the trickery of 
thought's vehicle, than to thought itself — rather to reason's shadow 
than to reason. Truth, for truth's sake, is seldom so enforced. It 
is scarcely too much to say that the style of the profound thinker 
is never closely logical. Here we might instance George Combe 
— than whom a more candid reasoner never, perhaps, wrote or 
spoke — than whom a more complete antipode to Babington Ma- 
caulay there certainly never existed. The former reasons to dis- 
cover the true. The latter argues to convince the world, and, in 
arguing, not unfrequently surprises himself into conviction. What 



446 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

Combe appears to Macaulay it would be a difficult thing to say. 
"What Macaulay is thought of by Combe we can understand very 
well. The man who looks at an argument in its details alone, 
will not fail to be misled by the one ; while he who keeps steadily 
in view the generality of a thesis will always at least approximate 
the truth under guidance of the other. 

Macaulay's tendency — and the tendency of mere logic in gene- 
ral — to concentrate force upon minutiae, at the expense of a sub- 
ject as a whole, is well instanced in an article (in the volume 
now before us) on Ranke' History of the Popes. This article is 
called a review — possibly because it is anything else — as lucus is 
lucus a non lucendo. In fact it is nothing more than a beautifully 
w 7 ritten treatise on the main theme of Ranke himself; the whole 
matter of the treatise being deduced from the History. In the 
way of criticism there is nothing worth the name. The strength 
of the essayist is put forth to account for the progress of Roman- 
ism by maintaining that divinity is not a progressive science. The 
enigmas, says he in substance, which perplex the natural theolo- 
gian are the same in all ages, while the Bible, where alone we 
are to seek revealed truth, has always been what it is. 

The manner in which these two propositions are set forth, is a 
model for the logician and for the student of belles lettres — yet the 
error into which the essayist has rushed headlong, is egregious. 
He attempts to deceive his readers, or has deceived himself, by 
confounding the nature of that proof from which we reason of the 
concerns of earth, considered as man's habitation, and the nature 
of that evidence from which we reason of the same earth regard- 
ed as a unit of that vast whole, the universe. In the former case 
the data being palpable, the proof is direct: in the latter it is 
purely analogical. Were the indications we derive from science, 
of the nature and designs of Deity, and thence, by inference, of 
man's destiny — were these indications proof direct, no advance in 
science would strengthen them — for, as our author truly observes, 
" nothing could be added to the force of the argument which the 
mind finds in every beast, bird, or flower" — but as these indica- 
tions are rigidly analogical, every step in human knowledge — 
every astronomical discovery, for instance — throws additional light 
upon the august subject, by extending the range of analogy. That 



CHARLES LEVER. 447 



we know no more to-day of the nature of Deity — of its purposes 
— and thus of man himself — than we did even a dozen years ago 
— is a proposition disgracefully absurd ; and of this any astrono- 
mer could assure Mr. Macaulay. Indeed, to our own mind, the 
only irrefutable argument in support of the soul's immortality — 
or, rather, the only conclusive proof of man's alternate dissolution 
and re-juvenescence ad infinitum — is to be found in analogies de- 
duced from the modern established theory of the nebular cos- 
mogony.* Mr. Macaulay, in short, has forgotten that he fre- 
quently forgets, or neglects, — the very gist of his subject. He 
has forgotten that analogical evidence cannot, at all time, be dis- 
coursed of as if identical with proof direct. Throughout the 
whole of his treatise he has made no distinction whatever. 



CHARLES LEVER.* 

The first point to be observed in the consideration of " Charles 
O'Malley" is the great popularity of the work. We believe that 
in this respect it has surpassed even the inimitable compositions 
of Mr. Dickens. At all events it has met with a most extensive 
sale ; and, although the graver journals have avoided its discus- 
sion, the ephemeral press has been nearly if not quite unanimous 
in its praise. To be sure the commendation, although unqualified, 
cannot be said to have abounded in specification, or to have been, 
in any regard, of a satisfactory character to one seeking precise 
ideas on the topic of the book's particular merit. It appears to us, in 
fact, that the cabalistical words " fun" " rollicking" and " devil- 
may-care," if indeed words they be, have been made to stand in good 
stead of all critical comment in the case of the work now under 
review. We first saw these dexterous expressions in a fly-leaf of 

* This cosmogony demonstrates that all existing bodies in the universe 
are formed of a nebular matter, a rare ethereal medium, pervading space — 
shows the mode and laws of formation — and proves that all things are in a 
perpetual state of progress — that nothing in nature is perfected. 

\ Charles O'Malley, the Irish Dragoon. By Harry Lorrequer. With For- 
ty Illustrations by Phiz. Complete in one volume. Carey & Hart : Phila- 
delphia. 



448 CHARLES LEVER. 



" Opinions of the Press" appended to the renowned " Harry Lor- 
requer" by his publisher in Dublin. Thence transmitted, with 
complacent echo, from critic to critic, through daily, weekly and 
monthly journals without number, they have come at length to 
form a pendant and a portion of our author's celebrity — have come 
to be regarded as sufficient response to the few ignoramuses, who, 
obstinate as ignorant, and fool-hardy as obstinate, venture to pro- 
pound a question or two about the true claims of " Harry Lorre- 
quer" or the justice of the pretensions of " Charles O'Malley." 

We shall not insult our readers by supposing any one of them 
unaware of the fact, that a book may be even exceedingly popu- 
lar without any legitimate literary merit. This fact can be proven 
by numerous examples which, now and here, it will be unneces- 
sary and perhaps indecorous to mention. The dogma, then, is 
absurdly false, that the popularity of a work is prima facie evi- 
dence of its excellence in some respects ; that is to say, the dog- 
ma is false if we confine the meaning of excellence (as here of 
course it must be confined) to excellence in a literary sense. The 
truth is, that the popularity of a book is prima facie evidence of 
just the converse of the proposition — it is evidence of the book's 
demerit, inasmuch as it shows a "stooping to conquer" — inasmuch 
at it shows that the author has dealt largely, if not altogether, in 
matters which are susceptible of appreciation by the mass of mankind 
— by uneducated thought — by uncultivated taste, by unrefined and 
unguided passion. So long as the world retains its present point of 
civlization,so long will it be almost an axiom that no extensively pop- 
ular book, in the right application of the term, can be a work of high 
merit, as regards those particulars of the work which are popular. 
A book may be readily sold, may be universally read, for the sake of 
some half or two-thirds of its matter, which half or two-thirds may be 
susceptible of popular appreciation, while the one-half or one- 
third remaining may be the delight of the highest intellect and 
genius, and absolute caviare to the rabble. And just as 
Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci, 

so will the writer of fiction, who looks most sagaciously to his own in- 
terest, combine all votes bv interminalino; with his loftier efforts such 
amount of less ethereal matter as will give general currency to his 
composition. And here we shall be pardoned for quoting some 



CHARLES LEVER. 449 



observations of the English artist, H. Howard. Speaking of imi- 
tation, he says : 

The pleasure that results from it, even when employed upon the most or- 
dinary materials, will always render that property of our art the most at- 
tractive with the majority, because it may be enjoyed with the least men- 
tal exertion. All men are in some degree judges of it. The cobbler in his 
own line may criticise Apelles ; and popular opinions are never to be wholly 
disregarded concerning that which is addressed to the public — who, to a cer- 
tain extent, are generally right ; although as the language of the refined can 
never be intelligible to the uneducated, so the higher styles of art can never 
be acceptable to the multitude. In proportion as a work rises in the scale 
of intellect, it must necessarily become limited in the number of its admirers. 
For this reason the judicious artist, even in his loftiest efforts, will endeavor 
to introduce some of those qualities which are interesting to all, as a pass- 
port for those of a more intellectual character. 

And these remarks upon painting — remarks which are mere 
truisms in themselves — embody nearly the whole rationale of the 
topic now under discussion. It may be added, however, that the 
skill with which the author addresses the lower taste of the pop- 
ulace, is often a source of pleasure, because of admiration, to a 
taste higher and more refined, and may be made a point of com- 
ment and of commendation by the critic. 

In our review of " Barnaby Rudge," we were prevent- 
ed, through want of space, from showing how Mr. Dickens 
had so well succeeded in uniting' all suffrages. What we have 
just said, however, will suffice upon this point. While he has 
appealed, in innumerable regards, to the most exalted intellect, 
he has meanwhile invariably touched a certain string whose vibra- 
tions are omni-prevalent. We allude to his powers of imitation 
— that species of imitation to which Mr. Howard has reference — 
the faithful depicting of what is called still-life, and particularly 
of character in humble condition. It is his close observation and 
imitation of nature here which have rendered him popular, while 
his higher qualities, with the ingenuity evinced in addressing the 
general taste, have secured him the good word of the informed 
and intellectual. 

But this is an important point upon which we desire to be dis- 
tinctly understood. We wish here to record our positive dissent 
(be that dissent worth what it may) from a very usual opinion — 
the opinion that Mr. Dickens has done justice to his own genius 
— that any man ever failed to do grievous wrong to his own ge- 
nius — in appealing to the popular judgment at all. As a matter 



450 CHARLES LEVER. 



of pecuniary policy alone, is any such appeal defensible. But we 
speak, of course, in relation to fame — in regard to that 



spur which the true spirit doth raise 



To scorn delight and live laborious days. 

That a perfume should be found by any " true spirit" in the 
incense of mere popular applause, is, to our own apprehension at 
least, a thing inconceivable, inappreciable, — a paradox which gives 
the lie unto itself — a mystery more profound than the well of 
Democritus. Mr. Dickens has no more business with the rabble 
than a seraph with a chapeau de bras. What's Hecuba to him or 
he to Hecuba ? What is he to Jacques Bonhoinme* or Jacques 
Bonhomme to him ! The higher genius is a rare gift and divine. 

£1 'toWwv ov rravTi paciverat, oj jxiv idr). [icyas ovros not to all men Apollo 

shows himself; he is alone great who beholds him.f And his great- 
ness has its office God-assigned. But that office is not a low commu- 
nion with low, or even with ordinary intellect. The holy — the elec- 
tric spark of genius is the medium of intercourse between the noble 
and more noble mind. For lesser purposes there are hum bier agents. 
There are puppets enough, able enough, willing enough, to per- 
form in literature the little things to which we have had reference. 
For one Fouque there are fifty Molieres. For one Angelo there 
are five hundred Jan Steens. For one Dickens there are five mil- 
lion Smollets, Fieldings, Marryatts, Arthurs, Cocktons, Bogtons 
and Frogtons. 

It is, in brief, the duty of all whom circumstances have led 
into criticism — it is, at least, a duty from which we individually 
shall never shrink — to uphold the true dignity of genius, to com- 
bat its degradation, to plead for the exercise of its powers in 
those bright fields which are its legitimate and peculiar province, 
and which for it alone He gloriously outspread. 

But to return to "Charles O'Malley," and its popularity. We 
have endeavored to show that this latter must not be considered 
in any degree as the measure of its merit, but should rather be 
understood as indicating a deficiency in this respect, when we bear 
in mind, as we should do, the highest aims of intellect in fiction. 

* Nickname for the populace in the middle ages. 
f Callimachus — Hymn to Apollo, 



CHARLES LEVER. 451 



A slight examination of the work, (for in truth it is worth no 
more,) will sustain us in what we have said. The plot is exceed- 
ingly meagre. Charles O'Malley, the hero, is a young orphan 
Irishman, living in Galway county, Ireland, in the house of his uncle 
Godfrey, to whose sadly encumbered estates the youth is heir appa- 
rent and presumptive. He becomes enamoured, while on a visit to a 
neighbor, of Miss Lucy Dash wood, and finds a rival in a Captain 
Hammersley. Some words carelessly spoken by Lucy, inspire him 
with a desire for military renown. After sojourning, therefore, for 
a brief period, at Dublin University, he obtains a commission and 
proceeds to the peninsula, with the British army under Welling- 
ton. Here he distinguishes himself; is promoted; and meets fre- 
quently with Miss Dashwood, whom obstinately, and in spite of 
the lady's own acknowledgment of love for himself, he supposes 
in love with Hammersley. Upon the storming of Ciudad Rodrigo 
he returns home ; finds his uncle, of course, just dead ; and sells 
his commission to disencumber the estate. Presently Napoleon 
escapes from Elba, and our hero, obtaining a staff appointment 
under Picton, returns to the Peninsula, is present at Waterloo, 
(where Hammersley is killed) saves the life of Lucy's father for 
the second time, as he has already twice saved that of Lucy herself ; 
is rewarded by the hand of the latter; and making his way back 
to O'Malley Castle, " lives happily all the rest of his days." 

In and about this plot (if such it may be called) there are more 
absurdities than we have patience to enumerate. The author, or 
narrator, for example, is supposed to be Harry Lorrequer as far as 
the end of the preface, which by the way, is one of the best por- 
tions of the book. O'Malley then tells his own story. But the 
publishing office of the "Dublin University Magazine" (in which 
the narrative originally appeared) having been burned down, 
there ensues a sad confusion of identity between O'Malley and 
Lorrequer, so that it is difficult, for the nonce, to say which is 
which. In the want of copy consequent upon the disaster, 
James, the novelist, comes in to the relief of Lorrequer, or per- 
haps of O'Malley, with one of the flattest and most irrelevant of 
love-tales. Meantime, in the story proper are repetitions without 
end. We have already said that the hero saves the life of his 
mistress twice, and of her father twice. But not content with 



452 CHARLES LEVER. 



this, lie has two mistresses, and saves the life of both, at different 
periods, in precisely the same manner — that is to say, by causing 
his horse, in each instance, to perform a Munchausen side-leap, at 
the moment when a spring forward would have impelled him 
upon his beloved. And then we have one unending, undeviating 
succession of junketings, in which " devilled kidneys " are never 
by any accident found wanting. The unction and pertinacity 
with which the author discusses what he chooses to denominate 
" devilled kidneys " are indeed edifying, to say no more. The 
truth is, that drinking, telling anecdotes, and devouring " devilled 
kidneys" may be considered as the sum total, as the thesis of the 
book. Never in the whole course of his eventful life, does Mr. 
O'Malley get " two or three assembled together" without seducing 
them forthwith to a table, and placing before them a dozen of 
wine and a dish of " devilled kidneys." This accomplished, the 
parties begin what seems to be the business of the author's exist- 
ence — the narration of unusually broad tales — like those of tha 
Southdown mutton. And here, in fact, we have the plan of that 
whole work of which the "United Service Gazette" has been 
pleased to vow it " would rather be the author than of all the 
4 Pickwicks' and ' Nicklebys' in the world" — a sentiment which we 
really blush to say has been echoed by many respectable members 
of our own press. The general plot or narrative is a mere thread 
upon which after-dinner anecdotes, some good, some bad, some 
utterly worthless, and not one truly original, are strung with about 
as much method, and about half as much dexterity, as we see 
ragged urchins employ in stringing the kernels of nuts. 

It would, indeed, be difficult to convey to one who has not ex- 
amined this production for himself, any idea of the exceedingly 
rough, clumsy, and inartistical manner in which even this bald 
conception is carried out. The stories are absolutely dragged in 
by the ears. So far from rinding them result naturally or plausi- 
bly from the conversation of the interlocutors, even the blindest 
reader may perceive the author's struggling and blundering effort 
to introduce them. It is rendered quite evident that they were 
originally " on hand," and that " O'Malley" has been concocted 
for their introduction. Among other nia'iseries we observe the 
silly trick of whetting appetite by delay. The conversation over the 



CHARLES LEVER. 453 



" kidneys" is brought, for example, to such a pass that one of the 
speakers is called upon for a story, which he forthwith declines 
for any reason, or for none. At a subsequent " broil" he is again 
pressed, and again refuses, and it is not until the reader's patience 
is fairly exhausted, and he has consigned both the story and its 
author to Hades, that the gentlemen in question is prevailed upon 
to discourse. The only conceivable result of this fanfarronade 
is the ruin of the tale when told, through exaggerating anticipa- 
tion respecting it. 

The anecdotes thus narrated being the staple of the book, and 
the awkward manner of their interlocution having been pointed 
out, it but remains to be seen what the anecdotes are, in them- 
selves, and what is the merit of their narration. And here, let 
it not be supposed that we have any design to deprive the devil of 
his due. There are several very excellent anecdotes in " Charles 
O'Malley" very cleverly and pungently told. Many of the scenes 
in which Monsoon figures are rich — less, however, from the scenes 
themselves than from the piquant, but by no means original cha- 
racter of Monsoon — a drunken, maudlin, dishonest old Major, given 
to communicativeness and mock morality over his cups, and not 
over careful in detailing adventures which tell against himself. 
One or two of the college pictures are unquestionably good — but 
might have been better. In general, the reader is made to feel 
that fine subjects have fallen into unskilful hands. By way of in- 
stancing this assertion, and at the same time of conveying an idea 
of the tone and character of the stories, we will quote one of the 
shortest, and assuredly one of the best. 

" Ah, by-the-by, how's the Major ?" 

" Charmingly : only a little bit in a scrape just now. Sir Arthur — Lord 
Wellington, I mean — had him up for his fellows being caught pillaging, and 
gave him a devil of a rowing a few days ago. 

" ' Very disorderly corps yours, Major O'Shaughnessy,' said the general ; 
' more men up for punishment than any regiment in the service.' 

" Shaugh muttered something, but his voice was lost in a loud cock-a-doo- 
doo-doo, that some bold chanticleer set up at the moment. 

" ' If the officers do their duty, Major O'Shaughnessy, these acts of insubor- 
dination do not occur.' 

" ' Cock-a-doo-doo-doo,' was the reply. Some of the staff found it hard not 
to laugh ; but the general went on — 

" ' If, therefore, the practice does not cease, I'll draft the men into West 
India regiments." 

" ' Cock-a-doo-doo-doo !' 



454 CHARLES LEVER 



" ' And if any articles pillaged from the inhabitants are detected in the 
quarters, or about the persons of the troops — ' 

" ' Cock-a-doo-doo-o?oo /' screamed louder here than ever. 

" ' Damn that cock — where is it ?' 

" There was a general look around on all sides, which seemed in vain ; 
when a tremendous repetition of the cry resounded from O'Shaughnessy's 
coat-pocket : thus detecting the valiant Major himself in the very practice of his 
corps. There was no standing this : every one burst out into a peal of laugh 
ter ; and Lord Wellington himself could not resist, but turned away muttering 
to himself as he went — ' Damned robbers every man of them," while a final 
war-note from the Major's pocket closed the inteiwiew." 

Now this is an anecdote at which every one will laugh ; but its 
effect might have been vastly heightened by putting a few words 
of grave morality and reprobation of the conduct of his troops, 
into the mouth of O'Shaughnessy, upon whose character they 
would have told well. The cock, in interrupting the thread of his 
discourse, would thus have afforded an excellent context. We 
have scarcely a reader, moreover, who will fail to perceive the 
want of tact shown in dwelling upon the mirth which the anec- 
dute occasioned. The error here is precisely like that of a man's 
laughing at his own spoken jokes. Our author is uniformly guilty 
of this mistake. He has an absurd fashion, also, of informing the 
reader, at the conclusion of each of his anecdotes, that, however 
good the anecdote might be, he (the reader) cannot enjoy it to the 
full extent in default of the manner in which it was orally narrated. 
He has no business to say anything of the kind. It is his duty to 
convey the manner not less than the matter of his narratives. 

But we may say of these latter that, in general, they have the 
air of being remembered rather than invented. No man who has 
seen much of the rough life of the camp will fail to recognise 
among them many very old acquaintances. Some of them are as 
ancient as the hills, and have been, time out of mind, the common 
property of the bivouac. They have been narrated orally all the 
world over. The chief merit of the writer is, that he has been the 
first to collect and to print them. It is observable, in fact, that the 
second volume of the work is very far inferior to the first. The 
author seems to have exhausted his whole hoarded store in the 
beginning. His conclusion is barren indeed, and but for the his- 
torical details (for which he has no claim to merit) would be espe- 
cially prosy and dull. Now the true invention never exhausts it- 
self. It is mere cant and ignorance to talk of the possibility of 



CHARLES LEVER. 455 



the really imaginative man's " writing himself out." His soul 
but derives nourishment from the streams that flow therefrom. 
As well prate about the aridity of the eternal ocean e£ ovirep wwes 
irorafioi. So long as the universe of thought shall furnish matter 
for novel combination, so long will the spirit of true genius be 
original, be exhaustless — be itself. 

A few cursory observations. The book is filled to overflowing 
with songs of very doubtful excellence, the most of which are put 
into the mouth of Micky Free, an amusing Irish servant of O'Mal- 
ley's, and are given as his impromptu effusions. The subject of 
the improvisos is always the matter in hand at the moment of 
composition. The author evidently prides himself upon his poetical 
powers, about which the less we say the better ; but if anything 
were wanting to assure us of his absurd ignorance and inapprecia- 
tion of Art, we should find the fullest assurance in the mode in 
which these doggrel verses are introduced. 

The occasional sentiment with which the volumes are intersper- 
sed there is an absolute necessity for skipping. 

Can anybody tell us what is meant by the affectation of the word 
& envoy which is made the heading of two prefaces ? 

That portion of the account of the battle of Waterloo which 
gives O'Malley's experiences while a prisoner, and in close juxta- 
position to Napoleon, bears evident traces of having been translated, 
and very literally too, from a French manuscript. 

The English of the work is sometimes even amusing. We have 
continually, for example, eat, the present, for ate, the perpect — page 
17. At page 16 we have this delightful sentence : " Captain Ham- 
mersley, however, never took further notice of me, but continued to 
recount, for the amusement of those about, several excellent stories 
of his military career, which I confess were heard with every test of 
delight by all save me." At page 35*7 we have some sage talk 
about " the entire of the army ;" and at page 368 the accomplished 
O'Malley speaks of " drawing a last look upon his sweetheart." 
These things arrest our attention as we open the book at random. It 
abounds in them, and in vulgar-isms even much worse than they. 

But why speak of vulgarisms of language ? There is a disgust- 
ing vulgarism of thought which pervades and contaminates this 
whole production, and from which a delicate or lofty mind will 



456 FRANCIS MARRYATT. 

shrink as from a pestilence. Not the least repulsive manifestation 
of this leprosy is to be found in the author's blind and grovelling 
worship of mere rank. Of the Prince Regent, that filthy compound 
of all that is bestial — that lazar-house of all moral corruption — he 
scruples not to speak in terms of the grossest adulation — sneering 
at Edmund Burke in the same villanous breath in which he extols 
the talents, the graces and the virtues of George the Fourth ! 
That any man, to-day, can be found so degraded in heart as to 
style this reprobate, " one who, in every feeling of his nature, and 
in every feature of his deportment was every inch a prince" — is 
matter for grave reflection and sorrowful debate. The American, 
at least, who shall peruse the concluding pages of the book now 
under review, and not turn in disgust from the base sycophancy 
which infects them, is unworthy of his country and his name. 
But the truth is, that a gross and contracted soul renders itself 
unquestionably manifest in almost every line of the composition. 

And this — this is the work, in respect to which its author, aping 
the airs of intellect, prates about his " haggard cheek," his "sunken 
eye," his "aching and tired head," his "nights of toil," and 
(good heavens) his "days of thought!" That the thing is pop- 
ular we grant — while that we cannot deny the fact, we grieve. 
But the career of true taste is onward — and now moves more vigo- 
rously onward than ever — and the period, perhaps, is not hopelessly 
distant, when in decrying the mere balderdash of such matters 
as " Charles O'Malley," we shall do less violence to the feelings 
and judgment even of the populace, than, we much fear, has 
been done in this article. 



FRANCIS MARRYATT. 

It has been well said that " the success of certain works may 
be traced to sympathy between the author's mediocrity of ideas, 
and mediocrity of ideas on the part of the public." In comment- 
ing on this passage, Mrs. Gore, herself a shrewd philosopher, 
observes that, whether as regards men or books, there exists an 
excellence too excellent for general favor. To " make a hit" — to 
captivate the public eye, ear, or understanding without a certain 



FRANCIS MARRYATT. 457 



degree of merit — is impossible ; but the " hardest hit" is seldom 
made, indeed we may say never made, by the highest merit. 
When we wrote the word seldom we were thinking of Dickens 
and the " Curiosity Shop," a work unquestionably of " the highest 
merit," and which at a first glance appears to have made the 
most unequivocal of "hits" — but we suddenly remembered that 
the compositions called " Harry Lorrequer" and " Charles O'Mal- 
ley" had borne the palm from " The Curiosity Shop" in point of 
what is properly termed popularity. 

There can be no question, we think, that the philosophy of all 
this is to be found in the apothegm with which we began. 
Marryatt is a singular instance of its truth. He has always been 
a very popular writer in the most rigorous sense of the word. 
His books are essentially " mediocre." His ideas are the com- 
mon property of the mob, and have been their common property 
time out of mind. We look throughout his writings in vain for 
the slightest indication of originality — for the faintest incentive to 
thought. His plots, his language, his opinions are neither adapt- 
ed nor intended for scrutiny. We must be contented with them 
as sentiments, rather than as ideas; and properly to estimate 
them, even in this view, we must bring ourselves into a sort of iden- 
tification with the sentiment of the mass. Works composed in 
this spirit are sometimes purposely so composed by men of supe- 
rior intelligence, and here we call to mind the Chansons of Beran- 
ger. But usually they are the natural exponent of the vulgar 
thought in the person of a vulgar thinker. In either case they 
claim for themselves that which, for want of a more definite ex- 
pression, has been called by critics nationality. Whether this 
nationality in letters is a fit object for high-minded ambition, we 
cannot here pause to inquire. If it is, then Captain Marryatt occu- 
pies a more desirable position than, in our heart, we are willing 
to award him. 

"Joseph Rushbrook"* is not a book with which the critic 
should occupy many paragraphs. It is not very dissimilar to 
" Poor Jack," which latter is, perhaps, the best specimen of its 

* Joseph Rushbrook, or the Poacher. By Captain Marryatt, author of 
Peter Simple, Jacob Faithful, etc. etc. Two Volumes. Philadelphia : Ca- 
rey and Hart. 

Vol. III.— 20 



458 FRANCIS MARRYATT. 

author's cast of thought, and national manner, although inferior 
in interest to " Peter Simple." 

The plot can only please those who swallow the probabilities 
of " Sinbad the Sailor," or " Jack and the Bean-Stalk" — or we 
should have said, more strictly, the incidents ; for of plot, proper- 
ly speaking, there is none at all. 

Joseph Rush brook is an English soldier who, having long served 
his country and received a wound in the head, is pensioned and 
discharged. He becomes a poacher, and educates his son (the 
hero of the tale, and also named Joseph) to the same profession. 
A pedlar, called Byres, is about to betray the father, who avenges 
himself by shooting him. The son takes the burden of the crime 
upon himself, and flees the country. A reward is offered for his 
apprehension — a reward which one Furness, a schoolmaster, is 
very anxious to obtain. This Furness dogs the footsteps of our 
hero, much as Fagin, the Jew, dogs those of Oliver Twist, forcing 
him to quit place after place, just as he begins to get comfortably 
settled. In thus roaming about, little Joseph meets with all kinds 
of outrageously improbable adventures; and not only this, but 
the reader is bored to death with the outrageously improbable ad- 
ventures of every one with whom little Joseph comes in contact. 
Good fortune absolutely besets him. Money falls at his feet 
wherever he goes, and he has only to stoop and pick it up. At 
length he arrives at the height of prosperity, and thinks he is 
entirely rid of Furness, when Furness re-appears. That Joseph 
should, in the end, be brought to trial for the pedlar's murder is 
so clearly the author's design, that he who runs may read it, and 
we naturally suppose that his persecutor, Furness, is to be the in- 
strument of this evil. We suppose also, of course, that in bring- 
ing this misfortune upon our hero, the schoolmaster will involve 
himself in ruin, in accordance with the common ideas of poetical 
justice. But no; — Furness, being found in the way, is killed off, 
accidentally, having lived and plotted to no ostensible purpose, 
through the better half of the book. Circumstances that have 
nothing to do with the story involve Joseph in his trial. He 
refuses to divulge the real secret of the murder, and is sentenced 
to transportation. The elder Rushbrook, in the meantime, has 
avoided suspicion and fallen heir to a great property. Just as his 



FRANCIS MARY ATT. 459 



son is about to be sent across the water, some of Joe's friends dis- 
cover the true state of affairs, and obtain from the father, who ia 
now conveniently upon his death-bed, a confession of his guilt. 
Thus all ends well — if the word well can be applied in any sense 
to trash so ineffable — the father dies, the son is released, inherits 
the estate, marries his lady-love, and prospers in every possible 
and impossible way. 

We have mentioned the imitation of Fagin. A second plagiar- 
ism is feebly attempted in the character of one Nancy, a trull, who 
is based upon the Nancy of Oliver Twist — for Marryatt is not often 
at the trouble of diversifying his thefts. This Nancy changes her 
name three or four times, and so in fact do each and all of the 
dramatis persona?. This changing of name is one of the bright 
ideas with which the author of " Peter Simple" is most pertinaci- 
ously afflicted. We would not be bound to say how many aliases 
are borne by the hero in this instance — some dozen perhaps. 

The novels of Marryatt — his later ones^ at least — are evidently 
written to order, for certain considerations, and have to be deliver- 
ed within certain periods. He thus finds it his interest to push 
on. Now, for this mode of progress, incident is the sole thing 
which answers. One incident begets another, and so on ad infi- 
nitum. There is never the slightest necessity for pausing ; espe- 
cially where no plot is to be cared for. Comment, in the author's 
own person, upon what is transacting, is left entirely out of ques- 
tion. There is thus none of that binding power perceptible, which 
often gives a species of unity (the unity of the writer's individual 
thought) to the most random narrations. All works composed 
as we have stated Marry att's to be composed, will be run on, inci- 
dentally, in the manner described ; and, notwithstanding that it 
would seem at first sight to be otherwise, yet it is true that no 
works are so insufferably tedious. These are the novels which we 
read with a hurry exactly consonant and proportionate with that 
in which they were indited. We seldom leave them unfinished, 
yet we labor through to the end, and reach it with unalloyed 
pleasure. 

The commenting force can never be safely disregarded. It is 
far better to have a dearth of incident, with skilful observations 
upon it, than the utmost variety of event, without. In some pre- 



460 HENRY COCKTON. 



vious review we have observed (and our observation is borne out 
by analysis) that it was the deep sense of the want of this bind- 
ing and commenting power, in the old Greek drama, which gave 
rise to the chorus. The chorus came at length to supply, in some 
measure, a deficiency which is inseparable from dramatic action, 
and represented the expression of the public interest or sympathy 
in the matters transacted. The successful novelist must, in the 
same manner, be careful to bring into view his private interest, 
sympathy, and opinion, in regard to his own creations. 

We have spoken of " The Poacher" at greater length than we 
intended ; for it deserves little more than an announcement. It 
has the merit of a homely and not unnatural simplicity of style, 
and is not destitute of pathos : but this is all. Its English is ex- 
cessively slovenly. Its events are monstrously improbable. There 
is no adaptation of parts about it. The truth is, it is a pitiable 
production. There are twenty young men of our acquaintance 
who make no pretension to literary ability, yet who could pro- 
duce a better book in a week. 



HENRY C0CKT0N.* 

" Charles O'Malley," " Harry Lorrequer," " Valentine Vox," 
" Stanley Thorn," and some other effusions, are novels depending 
for effect upon what gave popularity to " Peregrine Pickle " — we 
mean practical joke. To men whose animal spirits are high, what- 
ever may be their mental ability, such works are always accepta- 
ble. To the uneducated, to those who read little, to the obtuse 
in intellect (and these three classes constitute the mass) these 
books are not only acceptable, but are the only ones which can be 
called so. We here make two divisions — that of the men who 
can think but who dislike thinking ; and that of the men who either 
have not been presented with the materials for thought, or who 
have no brains with which to " work up " the material. With 

* Stanley Thorn. By Henry Cockton, Esq., Author of " Valentine Vox, 
the Ventriloquist," etc., with Numerous Illustrations, designed by Cruik- 
ehank, Leech, etc., and engraved by Yeager. Lea &, Blanchard : Philadelphia. 



HENRY COCKTON. 461 



these classes of people " Stanley Thorn " is a favorite. It not 
only demands no reflection, but repels it, or dissipates it — much 
as a silver rattle the wrath of a child. It is not in the least 
degree suggestive. Its readers arise from its perusal with the 
identical idea in possession at sitting down. Yet, during perusal, 
there has been a tingling physico-mental exhilaration, somewhat 
like that induced by a cold bath, or a flesh-brush, or a gallop on 
horseback — a very delightful and very healthful matter in its way. 
But these things are not letters. " Valentine Vox," and " Charles 
O'Malley " are no more " literature " than cat-gut is music. The 
visible and tangible tricks of a baboon belong not less to the belles- 
lettres than does " Harry Lorrequer." When this gentleman 
adorns his countenance with lamp-black, knocks over an apple 
woman, or brings about a rent in his pantaloons, we laugh at him 
when bound up in a volume, just as we would laugh at his adven- 
tures if happening before our eyes in the street. But mere inci- 
dents whether serious or comic, whether occurring or described — 
mere incidents are not books. Neither are they the basis of books 
— of which the idiosyncrasy is thought in contradistinction from 
deed. A book without action cannot be ; but a book is only such, 
to the extent of its thought, independently of its deed. Thus of 
Algebra ; which is, or should be, defined as " a mode of comput- 
ing with symbols by means of signs." "With numbers, as Alge- 
bra, it has nothing to do ; and although no algebraic computation 
can proceed without numbers, yet Algebra is only such to the 
extent of its analysis, independently of its Arithmetic. 

We do not mean to find fault with the class of performances 
of which " Stanley Thorn " is one. Whatever tends to the amuse- 
ment of man tends to his benefit. Aristotle, with singular assur- 
ance, has declared poetry the most philosophical of all writing, 
(spoudiotaton kai philosophiJcotaton genos) defending it princi- 
pally upon that score. He seems to think — and many following 
him have thought — that the end of all literature should be in- 
struction — a favorite dogma of the school of Wordsworth. But 
! it is a truism that the end of our existence is happiness. If so, 
the end of every separate aim of our existence — of everything 
connected with our existence, should be still — happiness. There- 
, fore, the end of instruction should be happiness — and happiness, 



462 HENRY COCKTON. 



what is it but the extent or duration of pleasure ? — therefore, the 
end of instruction should be pleasure. But the cant of the Lakists 
would establish the exact converse, and make the end of all plea- 
sure instruction. In fact, ceteris paribus, he who pleases is of 
more importance to his fellow man than he who instructs, since 
the dulce is alone the utile, and pleasure is the end already attain- 
ed, which instruction is merely the means of attaining. It will 
be said that Wordsworth, with Aristotle, has reference to instruc- 
tion with eternity in view ; but either such cannot be the tenden- 
cy of his argument, or he is laboring at a sad disadvantage ; for 
his works — or at least those of his school — are professedly to be 
understood by the few, and it is the many who stand in need of 
salvation. Thus the moralist's parade of measures would be as 
completely thrown away as are those of the devil in " Melmoth," 
who plots and counterplots through three octavo volumes for the 
entrapment of one or two souls, while any common devil would 
have demolished one or two thousand. 

When, therefore, we assert that these practical-joke publications 
are not " literature," because not " thoughtful " in any degree, 
we must not be understood as objecting to the thing in itself, but 

to its claims upon our attention as critic. Dr. what is his 

name ? — strings together a number of facts or fancies which, when 
printed, answer the laudable purpose of amusing a very large, if 
not a very respectable number of people. To this proceeding upon 
the part of the Doctor — or on the part of his imitator, Mr. Jeremy 
Stockton, the author of " Valentine Vox," we can have no objec- 
tion whatever. His books do not please us. We will not read 
them. Still less shall we speak of them seriously as books. 
Being in no respect works of art, they neither deserve, nor are 
amenable to criticism. 

" Stanley Thorn " may be described, in brief, as a collection, 
rather than as a series, of practical haps and mishaps, befalling a 
young man very badly brought up by his mother. He flogs his 
father with a codfish, and does other similar things. We have no 
fault to find with him whatever, except that, in the end, he does 
not come to the gallows. 

We have no great fault to find with him, but with Mr. Bockton, 
his father, much. He is a consummate plagiarist ; and, in our 



HENRY COCKTOK 463 



opinion, nothing more despicable exists. There is not a good in- 
cident in his book (?) of which we cannot point out the paternity 
with at least a sufficient precision. The opening adventures are 
all in the style of " Cyril Thornton." Bob, following Amelia in 
disguise, is borrowed from one of the Smollet or Fielding novels 
— there are many of our readers who will be able to say which. 
The cab driven over the Crescent trottoir, is from Pierce Egan. 
The swindling tricks of Colonel Somebody, at the commencement 
of the novel, and of Captain Filcher afterwards, are from " Pick- 
wick Abroad." The doings at Madame Pompour's (or some such 
name) with the description of Isabelle, are from " Ecarte, or the 
Salons of Paris" — a rich book. The Sons-of-Glory scene (or its 
wraith) we have seen — somewhere ; while (not to be tedious) the 
whole account of Stanley's election, from his first conception of 
the design, through the entire canvass, the purchasing of the " In- 
dependents," the row at the hustings, the chairing, the feast, and 
the petition, is so obviously stolen from " Ten Thousand a Year," 
as to be disgusting. Bob and the " old venerable" — what are 
they but feeble reflections of young and old Weller ? The tone 
of the narration throughout is an absurd echo of Boz. For ex- 
ample — " ' We've come agin about them there little accounts of 
ourn — question is do you mean to settle 'em or don't you ?' His 
colleagues, by whom he was backed, highly approved of this ques- 
tion, and winked and nodded with the view of intimating to each 
other that in their judgment that was the point." Who so dull 
as to give Mr. Bogton any more credit for these things than we 
give the buffoon for the role which he has committed to memory ? 



464 CHARLES DICKENS. 



CHARLES DICKENS.* 

We often hear it said, of this or of that proposition, that it 
may be good in theory, but will not answer in practice ; and in 
such assertions we find the substance of all the sneers at critical 
art which so gracefully curl the upper lips of a tribe which is be- 
neath it. We mean the small geniuses — the literary Titmice — 
animalculae which judge of merit solely by result, and boast of 
the solidity, tangibility, and infallibility of the test which they 
employ. The worth of a work is most accurately estimated, they 
assure us, by the number of those who peruse it ; and " does a 
book sell ?" is a query embodying, in their opinion, all that need 
be said or sung on the topic of its fitness for sale. We should as 
soon think of maintaining, in the presence of these creatures, the 
dictum of Anaxagoras, that snow is black, as of disputing, for ex- 
ample, the profundity of that genius which, in a run of five hun- 
dred nights, has rendered itself evident in " London Assurance." 
" What," cry they, " are critical precepts to us, or to anybody ? 
Were we to observe all the critical rules in creation we should 
still be unable to write a good book" — a point, by the way, which 
we shall not now pause to deny. " Give us results" they vo- 
ciferate, " for we are plain men of common sense. We contend 
for fact instead of fancy — for practice in opposition to theory." 

The mistake into which the Titmice have been innocently led, 
however, is precisely that of dividing the practice which they 
would uphold, from the theory to which they would object. They 
should have been told in infancy, and thus prevented from exposing 
themselves in old age, that theory and practice are in so much 
one, that the former implies or includes the latter. A theory is 
only good as such, in proportion to its reducibility to practice. If 
the practice fail, it is because the theory is imperfect. To say 

* Barnaby Rudge. By Charles Dickens, (Boz.) Author of * The Old 
Curiosity-Shop," "Pickwick," "Oliver Twist," etc., etc. With numerous Il- 
lustrations, by Cattermole, Browne & Sibson. Lea & Blanchard : Philadel- 
phia. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 465 



■what they are in the daily habit of saying — that such or such a 
matter may be good in theory but is false in practice, — is to 
perpetrate a bull — to commit a paradox — to state a contradiction 
in terms — in plain words, to tell a lie which is a lie at sight to 
the understanding of anything bigger than a Titmouse. 

But we have no idea, just now, of persecuting the Tittlebats by 
too close a scrutiny into their little opinions. It is not our pur- 
pose, for example, to press them with so grave a weapon as the 
argumentum ad absurdum, or to ask them why, if the popularity 
of a book be in fact the measure of its worth, we should not be at 
once in condition to admit the inferiority of "Newton's Principia" 
to "Hoyle's Games;" of "Earnest Maltravers" to "Jack-the- 
Giant-Killer," or "Jack Sheppard," or "Jack Brag;" and of 
"Dick's Christian Philosopher" to "Charlotte Temple," or the 
" Memoirs of de Grammont," or to one or two dozen other works 
which must be nameless. Our present design is but to speak, at 
some length, of a book which in so much concerns the Titmice, 
that it affords them the very kind of demonstration which they 
chiefly affect— practical demonstration — of the fallacy of one of 
their favorite dogmas ; we mean the dogma that no work of fic- 
tion can fully suit, at the same time, the critical and the popular 
taste ; in fact, that the disregarding or contravening of critical 
rule is absolutely essential to success, beyond a certain and very 
limited extent, with the public at large. And if, in the course of 
our random observations — for we have no space for systematic re- 
view — it should appear, incidentally, that the vast popularity of 
" Barnaby Rudge" must be regarded less as the measure of its 
value, than as the legitimate and inevitable result of certain well- 
understood critical propositions reduced by genius into practice, 
there will appear nothing more than what has before become ap- 
parent in the "Vicar of Wakefield" of Goldsmith, or in the 
" Robinson Crusoe" of De Foe — nothing more, in fact, than what 
is a truism to all but the Titmice. 

Those who know us will not, from what is here premised, sup- 
pose it our intention, to enter into any wholesale laudation of 
" Barnaby Rudge." In truth, our design may appear, at a cur- 
sory glance, to be very different indeed. Boccalini, in his " Ad- 
vertisements from Parnassus," tells us that a critic once presented 

20* 



466 CHARLES DICKENS. 

Apollo with a severe censure upon an excellent poem. The god 
asked him for the beauties of the work. He replied that he only 
troubled himself about the errors. Apollo presented him with a 
sack of unwinnowed wheat, and bade him pick out all the chaff 
for his pains. Now we have not fully made up our minds that 
the god was in the right. We are not sure that the limit of criti- 
cal duty is not very generally misapprehended. Excellence may 
be considered an axiom, or a proposition which becomes self-evi- 
dent just in proportion to the clearness or precision with which it 
is put. If it fairly exists, in this sense, it requires no farther elu- 
cidation. It is not excellence if it need to be demonstrated as 
such. To point out too particularly the beauties of a work, is to 
admit, tacitly, that these beauties are not wholly admirable. Re- 
garding, then, excellence as that which is capable of self-mani- 
festation, it but remains for the critic to show when, where, and 
how it fails in becoming manifest ; and, in this showing, it will 
be the fault of the book itself if what of beauty it contains be 
not, at least, placed in the fairest light. In a word, we may as- 
sume, notwithstanding a vast deal of pitiable cant upon this topic, 
that in pointing out frankly the errors of a work, we do nearly all 
that is critically necessary in displaying its merits. In teaching 
what perfection is, how, in fact, shall we more rationally proceed 
than in specifying what it is not ? 

The plot of " Barnaby Rudge " runs thus : About a hundred 
years ago, Geoffrey Haredale and John Chester were schoolmates 
in England — the former being the scape-goat and drudge of the 
latter. Leaving school, the boys become friends, with much of 
the old understanding. Haredale loves ; Chester deprives him 
of his mistress. The one cherishes the most deadly hatred ; the 
other merely contemns and avoids. By routes widely different 
both attain mature age. Haredale, remembering his old love, 
and still cherishing his old hatred, remains a bachelor and is poor. 
Chester, among other crimes, is guilty of the seduction and heart- 
less abandonment of a gipsy-girl, who, after the desertion of her 
lover, gives birth to a son, and, falling into evil courses, is finally 
hung at Tyburn. The son is received and taken charge of, at an 
inn called the Maypole, upon the borders of Epping forest, and 
about twelve miles from London. This inn is kept by one John 



CHARLES DICKENS. 4G7 



Willet, a burley-headed and very obtuse little man, who has a 
son, Joe, and who employs his protege, under the single name of 
Hugh, as perpetual hostler at the inn. Hugh's father marries, in 
the meantime, a rich parvenue, who soon dies, but not before 
having presented Mr. Chester with a boy, Edward. The father, 
(a thoroughly selfish man-of-the- world, whose model is Chester- 
field,) educates this son at a distance, seeing him rarely, and call- 
ing him to the paternal residence, at London, only when he has 
attained the age of twenty-four or five. He, the father, has, long 
ere this time, spent the fortune brought him by his wife, having 
been living upon his wits and a small annuity for some eighteen 
years. The son is recalled chiefly that by marrying an heiress, 
on the strength of his own personal merit and the reputed wealth 
of old Chester, he may enable the latter to continue his gayeties 
in old age. But of this design, as well as of his poverty, Edward 
is kept in ignorance for some three or four years after his recall ; 
when the father's discovery of what he considers an inexpedient 
love-entanglement on the part of the son, induces him to dis- 
close the true state of his affairs, as well as the real tenor of his 
intentions. 

Now the love-entanglement of which we speak, is considered 
inexpedient by Mr. Chester for two reasons — the first of which is, 
that the lady beloved is the orphan niece of his old enemy, Hare- 
dale, and the second is, that Haredale (although in circumstances 
which have been much and very unexpectedly improved during 
the preceding twenty-two years) is still insufficiently wealthy to 
meet the views of Mr. Chester. 

We say that, about twenty-two years before the period in 
question, there came an unlooked-for change in the worldv cir- 
cumstances of Haredale. This gentleman has an elder brother, 
Eeuben, who has long possessed the family inheritence of the 
Haredales, residing at a mansion called " The Warren," not far 
from the Maypole Inn, which is itself a portion of the estate. 
Reuben is a widower, with one child, a daughter, Emma. Besides 
this daughter, there are living with him a gardener, a steward 
(whose name is Rudge) and two women servants, one of whom 
is the wife of Rudge. On the night of the nineteenth of March, 
1733, Rudge murders his master for the sake of a large sum of 



468 CHARLES DICKENS. 



money which he is known to have in possession. During the 
struggle, Mr. Haredale grasps the cord of an alarm-bell which 
hangs within his reach, but succeeds in sounding it only once or 
twice, when it is severed by the knife of the ruffian, who then, 
completing his bloody business, and securing the money, proceeds 
to quit the chamber. While doing this, however, he is discon- 
certed by meeting the gardener, whose pallid countenance evinces 
suspicion of the deed committed. The murderer is thus forced to 
kill his fellow servant. Having done so, the idea strikes him of 
transferring the burden of the crime from himself. He dresses 
the corpse of the gardener in his own clothes, puts upon its finger 
his own ring, and in its pocket his own watch — then drags it to a 
pond in the grounds, and throws it in. He now returns to the 
house, and, disclosing all to his wife, requests her to become a 
partner in his flight. Horror-stricken, she falls to the ground. 
He attempts to raise her. She seizes his wrist, staining her hand 
with blood in the attempt. She renounces him forever ; yet 
promises to conceal the crime. Alone, he flees the country. The 
next morning, Mr. Haredale being found murdered, and the stew- 
ard and gardener being both missing, both are suspected. Mrs. 
Rudo;e leaves The Warren, and retires to an obscure lodging in 
London (where she lives upon an annuity allowed her by Hare- 
dale) having given birth, on the very day after the murder, to a 
son, Barnaby Rudge, who proves an idiot, who bears upon his 
wrist a red mark, and who is born possessed with a manaical horror 
of blood. 

Some months since the assassination having elapsed, what 
appears to be the corpse of Rudge is discovered, and the outrage 
is attributed to the gardener. Yet not universally : — for, as 
Geoffrey Haredale comes into possession of the estate, there are 
not wanting suspicions (fomented by Chester) of his own partici- 
pation in the deed. This taint of suspicion, acting upon his 
hereditary gloom, together with the natural grief and horror of 
the atrocity, embitters the whole life of Haredale. He secludes 
himself at The Warren, and acquires a monomaniac acerbity of 
temper relieved only by love of his beautiful niece. 

Time wears away. Twenty-two years pass by. The niece has 
ripened in womanhood, and loves young Chester without the 



CHARLES DICKENS. 469 



knowledge of her uncle or the youth's father. Hugh has grown 
a stalwart man — the type of man the animal, as his father is of 
man the ultra-civilized. Rudge, the murderer, returns, urged to 
his undoing by Fate. He appears at the Maypole and inquires 
stealthily of the circumstances which have occurred at The Warren 
in his absence. He proceeds to London, discovers the dwelling 
of his wife, threatens her with the betrayal of her idiot son into 
vice and extorts from her the bounty of Haredale. Revolting at 
such appropriation of such means, the widow, with Barnaby, 
again seeks The Warren, renounces the annuity, and, refusing to 
assign any reason for her conduct, states her intention of quitting 
London forever, and of burying herself in some obscure retreat — 
a retreat which she begs Haredale not to attempt discovering. 
When he seeks her in London the next day, she is gone ; and 
there are no tidings, either of herself or of Barnaby ; until the 
expiration of five years — which bring the time up to that of the 
celebrated " No Popery " Riots of Lord George Gordon. 

In the meanwhile, and immediately subsequent to the reappear- 
ance of Rudge, Haredale and the elder Chester, each heartily 
desirous of preventing the union of Edward and Emma, have 
entered into a covenant, the result of which is that, by means of 
treachery on the part of Chester, permitted on that of Haredale, 
the lovers misunderstand each other and are estranged. Joe, also, 
the son of the inn-keeper, Willet, having been coquetted with, to 
too great an extent, by Dolly Varden, (the pretty daughter of one 
Gabriel Varden, a locksmith of Clerkenwell, London) and having 
been otherwise maltreated at home, enlists in his Majesty's army 
and is carried beyond seas, to America ; not returning until 
towards the close of the riots. Just before their commencement, 
Rudge, in a midnight prowl about the scene of his atrocity, is 
encountered by an individual who had been familiar with him in 
earlier life, while living at The Warren. This individual, terrified 
at what he supposes, very naturally, to be the ghost of the mur- 
dered Rudge, relates his adventure to his companions at the May- 
pole, and John Willet conveys the intelligence, forthwith, to Mr. 
Haredale. Connecting the apparition, in his own mind, with the 
peculiar conduct of Mrs. Rudge, this gentleman imbibes a suspi- 
cion, at once, of the true state of affairs. This suspicion (which 



470 CHARLES DICKENS. 



he mentions to no one) is, moreover, very strongly confirmed by 
an occurrence happening to Varden, the locksmith, who, visiting 
the woman late one night, finds her in communion of a nature 
apparently most confidential, with a ruffian whom the locksmith 
knows to be such, without knowing the man himself. Upon an 
attempt, on the part of Varden, to seize this ruffian, he is thwarted 
by Mrs. R. ; and upon Haredale's inquiring minutely into the per- 
sonal appearance of the man, he is found to accord with Rudge. 
We have already shown that the ruffian was in fact Rudge him- 
self. Acting upon the suspicion thus aroused, Haredale watches, 
by night, alone, in the deserted house formerly occupied by Mrs. 
R. in hope of here coming upon the murderer, and makes other 
exertions with the view of arresting him ; but all in vain. 

It is, also, at the conclusion of the five years, that the hitherto 
uninvaded retreat of Mrs. Rudge is disturbed by a message from 
her husband, demanding money. He has discovered her abode 
by accident. Giving him what she has at the time, she afterwards 
eludes him, and hastens, with Barnaby, to bury herself in the 
crowd of London, until she can find opportunity again to seek 
retreat in some more distant region of England. But the riots 
have now begun. The idot is beguiled into joining the mob, and, 
becoming separated from his mother (who, growing ill through 
grief, is borne to a hospital) meets with his old playmate Hugh, 
and becomes with him a ringleader in the rebellion. 

The riots proceed. A conspicuous part is borne in them by one 
Simon Tappertit, a fantastic and conceited little apprentice of 
Varden's, and a sworn enemy to Joe Willet, who has rivalled him 
in the affection of Dolly. A hangman, Dennis, is also very busy 
amid the mob. Lord George Gordon, and his secretary, Gashford, 
with John Grueby, his servant, appear, of course, upon the scene. 
Old Chester, who, during the five years, has become Sir John, in- 
stigates Gashford, who has received personal insult from Hare- 
dale, (a catholic and consequently obnoxious to the mob) insti- 
gates Gashford to procure the burning of The Warren, and to 
abduct Emma during the excitement ensuing. The mansion is 
burned, (Hugh, who also fancies himself wronged by Haredale, 
being chief actor in the outrage) and Miss H. carried off, in com- 
pany with Dolly, who had long lived with her, and whom Tapper- 



CHARLES DICKENS. 471 

tit abducts upon his own responsibility. Rudge, in the meantime, 
finding the eye of Haredale upon him, (since he has become 
aware of the watch kept nightly at his wife's,) goaded by the 
dread of solitude, and fancying that his sole chance of safety lies 
in joining the rioters, hurries upon their track to the doomed 
Warren. He arrives too late — the mob have departed. Skulk- 
ing about the ruins, he is discovered by Haredale, and finally cap- 
tured without a struggle, within the glowing walls of the very 
chamber in which the deed was committed. He is conveyed to 
prison, where he meets and recognises Barnaby, who had been 
captured as a rioter. The mob assail and burn the jail. The 
father and son escape. Betrayed by Dennis, both are again re- 
taken, and Hugh shares their fate. In Newgate, Dennis, through 
accident, discovers the parentage of Hugh, and an effort is made 
in vain to interest Chester in behalf of his son. Finally, Varden 
procures the pardon of Barnaby ; but Hugh, Rudge, and Dennis, 
are hung. At the eleventh hour, Joe returns from abroad with 
one arm. In company with Edward Chester, he performs prodi- 
gies of valor (during the last riots) on behalf of the government. 
The two, with Haredale and Varden, rescue Emma and Dolly. A 
double marriage, of course, takes place ; for Dolly has repented 
her fine airs, and the prejudices of Haredale are overcome. Hav- 
ing killed Chester in a duel, he quits England forever, and ends 
his days in the seclusion of an Italian convent. Thus, after sum- 
mary disposal of the understrappers, ends the drama of " Barna- 
by Rudge." 

We have given, as may well be supposed, but a very meagre 
outline of the story, and we have given it in the simple or natural 
sequence. That is to say, we have related the events, as nearly 
as might be, in the order of their occurrence. But this order 
would by no means have suited the purpose of the novelist, whose 
desio-n has been to maintain the secret of the murder, and the 
consequent mystery which encircles Rudge, and the actions of his 
wife, until the catastrophe of his discovery by Haredale. The 
thesis of the novel may thus be regarded as based upon curiosity. 
Every point is so arranged as to perplex the reader, and whet his 
desire for elucidation : — for example, the first appearance of Rudge 
at the Maypole ; his questions ; his persecution of Mrs. R. ; the 



472 CHARLES DICKENS. 

ghost seen by the frequenter of the Maypole ; and Haredale's 
impressive conduct in consequence. What we have told, in the 
very beginning of our digest, in regard to the shifting of the 
gardener's dress, is sedulously kept from the reader's knowledge 
until he learns it from Rudge's own confession in jail. We say 
sedulously ; for, the intention once known, the traces of the design 
can be found upon every page. There is an amusing and exceed- 
ingly ingenious instance at page 145, where Solomon Daisy 
describes his adventure with the ghost. 

" It was a ghost — a spirit," cried Daisy. 

" Whose P they all three asked together. 

In the excess of his emotion (for he fell back trembling in his chair and 
waved his hand as if entreating them to question him no farther) his answer 
was lost upon all but old John Willet, who happened to be seated close 
beside him. 

" Who !" cried Parkes and Tom Cobb—" Who was it P 

" Gentlemen," said Mr. Willet, after a long pause, " you needn't ask. The 
likeness of a murdered man. This is the nineteenth of March." 

A profound silence ensued. 

The impression here skilfully conveyed is, that the ghost seen 
is that of Reuben Haredale ; and the mind of the not-too-acute 
reader is at once averted from the true state of the case — from the 
murderer, Rudge, living in the body. 

Now there can be no question that, by such means as these, 
many points which are comparatively insipid in the natural 
sequence of our digest, and which would have been comparative- 
ly insipid even if given in full detail in a natural sequence, are 
endued with the interest of mystery ; but neither can it be denied 
that a vast many more points are at the same time deprived of all 
effect, and become null, through the impossibility of comprehend- 
ing them without the key. The author, who, cognizant of his plot, 
writes with this cognizance continually operating upon him, and 
thus writes to himself in spite of himself, does not, of course, feel 
that much of what is effective to his own informed perception, 
must necessarily be lost upon his uninformed readers ; and he 
himself is never in condition, as regards his own work, to bring 
the matter to test. But the reader may easily satisfy himself of 
the validity of our objection. Let him re-peruse " Barnaby 
Rudge," and with a pre-comprehension of the mystery, these 
points of which we speak break out in all directions like stars, and 



CHARLES DICKENS. 473 



throw quadruple brilliance over the narrative — a brilliance which 
a correct taste will at once declare unprofitably sacrificed at the 
shrine of the keenest interest of mere mystery. 

The design of mystery, however, being once determined upon 
by an author, it becomes imperative, first, that no undue or inartis- 
tical means be employed to conceal the secret of the plot ; and, 
secondly, that the secret be well kept. Now, when, at page 16, 
we read that " the body of poor Mr. Rudge, the steward, was 
found'''' months after the outrage, &c, we see that Mr. Dickens 
has been guilty of no misdemeanor against Art in stating what 
was not the fact ; since the falsehood is put into the mouth of 
Solomon Daisy, and given merely as the impression of this indi- 
vidual and of the public. The writer has not asserted it in his 
own person, but ingeniously conveyed an idea (false in itself, yet 
a belief in which is necessary for the effect of the tale) by the 
mouth of one of his characters. The case is different, however, 
when Mrs. Rudge is repeatedly denominated " the widow.'' It 
is the author who, himself, frequently so terms her. This is dis- 
ingenuous and inartistical : accidentally so, of course. We speak 
of the matter merely by way of illustrating our point, and as an 
oversight on the part of Mr. Dickens. 

That the secret be well kept is obviously necessary. A failure 
to preserve it until the proper moment of denouement, throws all 
into confusion, so far as regards the effect intended. If the mys- 
tery leak out, against the author's will, his purposes are immedi- 
ately at odds and ends ; for he proceeds upon the supposition 
that certain impressions do exist, which do not exist, in the mind 
of his readers. We are not prepared to say, so positively as we 
could wish, whether, by the public at large, the whole mystery of 
the murder committed by Rudge, with the identity of the May- 
pole ruffian with Rudge himself, was fathomed at any period 
previous to the period intended, or, if so, whether at a period 
so early as materially to interfere with the interest designed ; but 
we are forced, through sheer modesty, to suppose this the case ; 
since, by ourselves individually, the secret was distinctly under- 
stood immediately upon the perusal of the story of Solomon 
Daisy, which occurs at the seventh page of this volume of three 
hundred and twenty-three. In the number of the " Philadelphia 



474 CHARLES DICKENS. 



Saturday Evening Post," for May the first, 1841, (the tale having 
then only begun) will be found a prospective notice of some 
length, in which we made use of the following words : 

That Barnaby is the son of the murderer may not appear evident to our 
readers — but we will explain. The person murdered is Mr. Reuben Hare- 
dale. He was found assassinated in his bed-chamber. His steward, (Mr. 
Rudge, senior,) and his gardener (name not mentioned) are missing. At first 
both are suspected. " Some months afterward " — here we use the words of 
the story — " the steward's body, scarcely to be recognised but by his clothes, 
and the watch and ring he wore — was found at the bottom of a piece of 
water in the grounds, with a deep gash in the breast, where he had been 
stabbed by a knife. He was only partly dressed ; and all people agreed 
that he had been sitting up reading in his own room, where there were 
many traces of blood, and was suddenly fallen upon and killed, before Ins 
master." 

Now, be it observed, it is not the author himself who asserts that the 
steicard's body was found ; he has put the words in the mouth of one of his 
characters. His design is to make it appear, in the denouement, that the 
steward, Rudge, first murdered the gardener, then went to his master's cham- 
ber, murdered him, was interrupted by his (Rudge's) wife, whom he seized 
and held by the wrist, to prevent her giving the alarm — that he then, after 
possessing himself of the booty desired, retumed to the gardener's room, ex- 
changed clothes with him, put upon the corpse his own watch and ring, and 
secreted it where it was afterwards discovered at so late a period that the 
features could not be identified. 

The differences between our pre-conceived ideas, as here stated, 
and the actual facts of the story, will be found immaterial. The 
gardener was murdered, not before but after his master ; and 
that Rudge's wife seized him by the wrist, instead of his seizing 
her, has so much the air of a mistake on the part of Mr. Dickens, 
that we can scarcely speak of our own version as erroneous. The 
grasp of a murderer's bloody hand on the wrist of a woman 
enciente, would have been more likely to produce the effect de- 
scribed (and this every one will allow) than the grasp of the 
hand of the woman upon the wrist of the assassin. We may 
therefore say of our supposition as Talleyrand said of some cock- 
ney's bad French — que s*il ne soit pas Francais, assurement done 
il le doit etre — that if we did not rightly prophecy, yet, at least, 
our prophecy should have been right. 

We are informed in the Preface to " Barnaby Rudge" that 
" no account of the Gordon Riots having been introduced into 



CHARLES DICKENS. 475 



any work of fiction, and the subject presenting very extraordinary 
and remarkable features," our author " was led to project this 
tale." But for this distinct announcement (for Mr. Dickens can 
scarcely have deceived himself) we should have looked upon the 
riots as altogether an afterthought. It is evident that the} 7 have 
no necessary connexion with the story. In our digest, which 
carefully includes all essentials of the plot, we have dismissed the 
doings of the mob in a paragraph. The whole event of the drama 
would have proceeded as well without as with them. They have 
even the appearance of being forcibly introduced. In our com- 
pendium above, it will be seen that we emphasized several allu- 
sions to an interval of five years. The action is brought up to a 
certain point. The train of events is, so far, uninterrupted — nor 
is there any apparent need of interruption — yet all the characters 
are now tfirown forward for a period of five years. And why ? 
We ask in vain. It is not to bestow upon the lovers a more 
decorous maturity of age — for this is the only possible idea which 
suggests itself — Edward Chester is already eight-and-twenty, and 
Emma Haredale would, in America at least, be upon the list of 
old maids. No — there is no such reason ; nor does there appear 
to be any one more plausible than that, as it is now the year of 
our Lord 1775, an advance of five years will bring the dramatis 
persona? up to a very remarkable period, affording an admirable 
opportunity for their display — the period, in short, of the " No 
Popery " riots. This was the idea with which we were forcibly 
impressed in perusal, and which nothing less than Mr. Dickens' 
positive assurance to the contrary would have been sufficient to 
eradicate. 

It is, perhaps, but one of a thousand instances of the disadvan- 
tages, both to the author and the public, of the present absurd 
fashion of periodical novel-writing, that our author had not 
sufficiently considered or determined upon any particular plot 
when he began the story now under review. In fact, we see, or 
fancy that we see, numerous traces of indecision — traces which a 
dexterous supervision of the complete work might have enabled 
him to erase. We have already spoken of the intermission of a 
lustrum. The opening speeches of old Chester are by far too 
truly gentlemanly for his subsequent character. The wife of 



476 CHARLES DICKENS. 



Varden, also, is too wholesale a shrew to be converted into the 

quiet wife — the original design was to punish her. At page 16, 

we read thus — Solomon Daisy is telling his story : 

" I put as good a face upon it as I could, and muffling myself up, started 
out with a lighted lantern in one hand and the key of the church in the 
other " — at this point of the narrative, the dress of the strange man rustled 
as if he had turned to hear more distinctly. 

Here the design is to call the reader's attention to a point in 
the tale; but no subsequent explanation is made. Again, a few 
lines below — 

The houses were all shut up, and the folks in doors, and perhaps there is 
only one man in the world who knows how dark it really was. 

Here the intention is still more evident, but there is no result. 
Again, at page 54, the idiot draws Mr. Chester to the window, 
and directs his attention to the clothes hanging upon the lines in 
the yard — 

* Look down," he said softly ; " do you mark how they whisper in each 
other's ears, then dance and leap to make believe they are in sport ? Do 
you see how they stop for a moment, when they think there is no one look- 
ing, and mutter among themselves again ; and then how they roll and 
gambol, delighted with the mischief they've been plotting ? Look at 'em 
now ! See how they whirl and plunge. And now they stop again, and 
whisper cautiously together — little thinking, mind, how often I have lain 
upon the ground and watched them. I say — what is it that they plot and 
hatch ? Do you know ?" 

Upon perusal of these ravings, we at once supposed them to 
have allusion to some real plotting ; and even now we cannot 
force ourselves to believe them not so intended. They suggested 
the opinion that Haredale himself would be implicated in the 
murder, and that the counselling^ alluded to might be those of 
that gentleman with Rudge. It is by no means impossible that 
some such conception wavered in the mind of the author. At 
page 32 we have a confirmation of our idea, when Varden endea- 
vors to arrest the murderer in the house of his wife — 

" Come back — come back !" exclaimed the woman, wrestling with and 
clasping him. " Do not touch him on your life. He carries other lives be- 
side his own!' 

The denouement fails to account for this exclamation. 

In the beginning of the story much emphasis is placed upon 
the two female servants of Haredale, and upon his journey to and 
from London, as well as upon his wife. We have merely said, 
in our digest, that he was a widower, italicizing the remark. All 



CHARLES DICKENS. 411 



these other points are, in fact, singularly irrelevant, in the suppo- 
sition that the original design has not undergone modification. 

Again, at page 57, when Haredale talks of " his dismantled 
and beggared hearth," we cannot help fancying that the author 
had in view some different wrong, or series of wrongs, perpetrated 
by Chester, than any which appear in the end. This gentleman, 
too, takes extreme and frequent pains to acquire dominion over 
the rough Hugh — this matter is particularly insisted upon by the 
novelist — we look, of course, for some important result — but the 
filching of a letter is nearly all that is accomplished. That Bar- 
naby's delight in the desperate scenes of the rebellion, is incon- 
sistent with his horror of blood, will strike every reader; and 
this inconsistency seems to be the consequence of the after-thought 
upon which we have already commented. In fact, the title of the 
work, the elaborate and pointed manner of the commencement, 
the impressive description of The Warren, and especially of Mrs. 
Rudge, go far to show that Mr. Dickens has really deceived him- 
self — that the soul of the plot, as originally conceived, was the 
murder of Haredale, with the subsequent discovery of the mur- 
derer in Rudge — but that this idea was afterwards abandoned, 
or rather suffered to be merged in that of the Popish riots. The 
result has been most unfavorable. That which, of itself, would 
have proved highly effective, has been rendered nearly null by 
its situation. In the multitudinous outrage and horror of the 
Rebellion, the one atrocity is utterly whelmed and extinguished. 

The reasons of this deflection from the first purpose appear to 
us self-evident. One of them we have already mentioned. The 
other is that our author discovered, when too late, that he had an- 
ticipated, and thus rendered valueless, his chief effect. This will 
be readily understood. The particulars of the assassination being 
withheld, the strength of the narrator is put forth, in the be- 
ginning of the story, to whet curiosity in respect to these partic- 
ulars ; and, so far, he is but in proper pursuance of his main 
design. But from this intention he unwittingly passes into the 
error of exaggerating anticipation. And error though it be, it 
is an error wrought with consummate skill. What, for example, 
could more vividly enhance our impression of the unknown hor- 
ror enacted, than the deep and enduring gloom of Haredale — 



418 CHARLES DICKENS. 

than the idiot's inborn awe of blood — or, especially, than the ex- 
pression of countenance so imaginatively attributed to Mrs. 
Rudge — " the capacity for expressing terror — something only 
dimly seen, but never absent for a moment — the shadow of some 
look to which an instant of intense and most unutterable horror 
only could have given rise V* But it is a condition of the human 
fancy that the promises of such words are irredeemable. In the 
notice before mentioned we thus spoke upon this topic : 

This is a conception admirably adapted to whet curiosity in respect to 
the character of that event which is hinted at as forming the basis of the 
story. But this observation should not fail to be made — that the anticipa- 
tion must surpass the reality ; that no matter how terrific be the circum- 
stances which, in the denouement, shall appear to have occasioned the 
expression of countenance worn habitually by Mrs. Rudge, still they will not 
be able to satisfy the mind of the reader. He will surely be disappointed. 
The skilful intimation of horror held out by the artist, produces an effect 
which will deprive his conclusion of all. These intimations — these dark 
hints of some uncertain evil — are often rhetorically praised as effective — 
but are only justly so praised where there is no denouement whatever — 
where the reader's imagination is left to clear up the mystery for itself — 
and this is not the design of Mr. Dickens. 

And, in fact, our author was not long in seeing his precipitancy. 
He had placed himself in a dilemma from which even his high 
genius could not extricate him. He at once shifts the main in- 
terest — and in truth we do not see what better he could have 
done. The reader's attention becomes absorbed in the riots, and 
he fails to observe that what should have been the true catastro- 
phe of the novel, is exceedingly feeble and ineffective. 

A few cursory remarks : — Mr. Dickens fails peculiarly in pure 
narration. See, for example, page 296, where the connexion of 
Hugh and Chester is detailed by Varden. See also in "The 
Curiosity-Shop," where, when the result is fully known, so many 
words are occupied in explaining the relationship of the brothers. 
The effect of the present narrative might have been materially in- 
creased by confining the action within the limits of London. The 
" Notre Dame" of Hugo affords a fine example of the force which 
can be gained by concentration, or unity of place. The unity of 
time is also sadly neglected, to no purpose, in " Barnaby Rudge." 
That Rudge should so long and so deeply feel the sting of con- 



CHARLES DICKENS. 479 



science is inconsistent with his brutality. On page 15, the inter- 
val elapsing between the murder and Rudge 's return, is variously- 
stated at twenty-two and twenty-four years. It may be asked 
why the inmates of "The Warren" failed to hear the alarm-bell 
which was heard by Solomon Daisy. The idea of persecution 
by being tracked, as by blood-hounds, from one spot of quietude 
to another, is a favorite one with Mr. Dickens. Its effect cannot 
be denied. The stain upon Barnaby's wrist, caused by fright in 
the mother at so late a period of gestation as one day before ma- 
ture parturition, is shockingly at war with all medical experience. 
When Rudge, escaped from prison, unshackled, with money at 
command, is in agony at his wife's refusal to perjure herself for 
his salvation — is it not queer that he should demand any other 
salvation than lay in his heels ? 

Some of the conclusions of chapters — see pages 40 and 100— 
seem to have been written for the mere purpose of illustrating 
tail-pieces. 

The leading idiosyncracy of Mr. Dickens' remarkable humor, is 

to be found in his translating the language of gesture, or action, 

or tone. For example — 

The cronies nodded to each other, and Mr. Parkes remarked in an under 
tone, shaking his head meanwhile, as who should sa,y " let no man contradict 
me, for I won't believe him" that Willet was in amazing force to-night. 

The riots form a series of vivid pictures never surpassed. At 
page 1*7, the road between London and the Maypole is described 
as a horribly rough and dangerous, and at page 97, as an uncom- 
monly smooth and convenient one. At page 116, how comes 
Chester in possession of the key of Mrs. Rudge's vacated house ? 

Mr. Dickens' English is usually pure. His most remarkable 
error is that of employing the adverb "directly" in the sense of 
"as soon as." For example — "Directly he arrived, Rudge said," 
<fec. Bulwer is uniformly guilty of the same blunder. 

It is observable that so original a stylist as our author should 
occasionally lapse into a gross imitation of what, itself, is a gross 
imitation. We mean the manner of Lamb — a manner based in 
the Latin construction. For example — * 

In summer time its pumps suggest to thirsty idlers springs cooler and 
more sparkling and deeper than other wells ; and as they trace the spillings 
of full pitchers on the heated ground, they snuff the freshness, and, sighing, 



480 CHARLES DICKENS. 



cast sad looks towards the Thames, and think of baths and boats, and 
saunter on, despondent. 

The wood -cut designs which acompany the edition before us 
are occasionally good. The copper engravings are pitiably ill- 
conceived and ill-drawn ; and not only this, but are in broad con- 
tradiction of the wood-designs and text. 

There are many coincidences wrought into the narrative — those, 
for example, which relate to the nineteenth of March ; the dream 
of Barnaby, respecting his father, at the very period when his 
father is actually in the house; and the dream of Haredale previous 
to his final meeting with Chester. These things are meant to 
insinuate a fatality which, very properly, is not expressed in plain 
terms — but it is questionable whether the story derives more in 
ideality from their introduction, than it might have gained of 
verisimilitude from their omission. 

The dramatis personce sustain the high fame of Mr. Dickens as 
a delineator of character. Miggs, the disconsolate handmaiden 
of Varden ; Tappertit, his chivalrous apprentice ; Mrs. Varden, 
herself; and Dennis, a hangman — may be regarded as original 
caricatures, of the highest merit as such. Their traits are founded 
in acute observation of nature, but are exaggerated to the utmost 
admissible extent. Miss Haredale and Edward Chester are com- 
monplaces — no effort has been made in their behalf. Joe Willet 
is a naturally drawn country youth. Stagg is a mere make- 
weight. Gashford and Gordon are truthfully copied. Dolly 
Varden is truth itself. Haredale, Rudge and Mrs. Rudge, are 
impressive only through the circumstances which surround them. 
Sir John Chester, is, of course, not original, but is a vast improve- 
ment upon all his predecessors — his heartlessness is rendered 
somewhat too amusino-, and his end too much that of a man of 
honor. Hugh is a noble conception. His fierce exultation in his 
animal powers ; his subserviency to the smooth Chester ; his 
mirthful contempt and patronage of Tappertit, and his brutal yet 
firm courage in the hour of death—form a picture to be set in 
diamonds. Old Willet is not surpassed by any character even 
among those of Dickens. He is nature itself — yet a step farther 
would have placed him in the class of caricatures. His combined 
conceit and obtusity are indescribably droll, and his peculiar mis- 



CHARLES DICKENS. 481 



directed energy when aroused, is one of the most exquisite touches 
in all humorous painting. * We shall never forget how heartily we 
laughed at his shaking Solomon Daisy and threatening to put him 
behind the fire, because the unfortunate little man was too much 
frightened to articulate. Varden is one of those free, jovial, 
honest fellows, at charity with all mankind, whom our author is 
so fond of depicting. And lastly, Barnaby, the hero of the tale 
— in him we have been somewhat disappointed. We have already 
said that his delight in the atrocities of the Rebellion is at 
variance with his horror of blood. But this horror of blood is 
inconsequential ; and of this we complain. Strongly insisted 
upon in the beginning of the narrative, it produces no adequate 
result. And here how fine an opportunity has Mr. Dickens 
missed ! The conviction of the assassin, after the lapse of twenty- 
two years, might easily have been brought about through his 
son's mysterious awe of blood — an awe created in the unborn by 
the assassination itself — and this would have been one of the 
finest possible embodiments of the idea which we are accustomed 
to attach to " poetical justice." The raven, too, intensely amusing 
as it is, might have been made, more than we now see it, a por- 
tion of the conception of the fantastic Barnaby. Its croakings 
might have been prophetically heard in the course of the drama. 
Its character might have performed, in regard to that of the idiot, 
much the same part as does, in music, the accompaniment in re- 
spect to the air. Each might have been distinct. Each might 
have differed remarkably from the other. Yet between them 
there might have been wrought an analogical resemblance, and 
although each might have existed apart, they might have formed 
together a whole which would have been imperfect in the 
absence of either. 

From what we have here said — and, perhaps, said without due 
deliberation — (for alas ! the hurried duties of the journalist pre- 
clude it) — there will not be wanting those who will accuse us of 
a mad design to detract from the pure fame of the novelist. But 
to such we merely say in the language of heraldry " ye should 
wear a plain point sanguine in your arms." If this be understood, 
well ; if not, well again. There lives no man feeling a deeper 
reverence for genius than ourself. If we have not dwelt so 

Vol. III. — 21 



482 CHARLES DICKENS. 



especially upon the high merits as upon the trivial defects of 
" Barnaby Rudge " we have already given our reasons for the 
omission, and these reasons will be sufficiently understood by all 
whom we care to understand them. The work before us is not, 
we think, equal to the tale which immediately preceded it ; but 
there are few — very few others to which we consider it inferior. 
Our chief objection has, not, perhaps, been so distinctly stated as 
we could wish. That this fiction, or indeed that any fiction 
written by Mr. Dickens, should be based in the excitement and 
maintenance of curiosity we look upon as a misconception, on the 
part of the writer, of his own very great yet very peculiar 
powers. He has done this thing well, to be sure — he would do 
anything well in comparison with the herd of his contemporaries — 
but he has not done it so thoroughly well as his high and just 
reputation would demand. We think that the whole book has 
been an effort to him — solely through the nature of its design. 
He has been smitten with an untimely desire for a novel path. 
The idiosyncrasy of his intellect would lead him, naturally, into 
the most fluent and simple style of narration. In tales of ordinary 
sequence he may and will long reign triumphant. He has a talent 
for all things, but no positive genius for adaptation, and still less 
for that metaphysical art in which the souls of all mysteries lie. 
" Caleb Williams " is a far less noble work than " The Old 
Curiosity-Shop ;" but Mr. Dickens could no more have constructed 
the one than Mr. Godwin could have dreamed of the other. 



MARGINALIA. 483 



MARGINALIA. 



In getting my books, I have been always solicitous of an ample 
margin ; this not so much through any love of the thing in itself, 
however agreeable, as for the facility it affords me of penciling 
suggested thoughts, agreements, and differences of opinion, or 
brief critical comments in general. Where what I have to note 
is too much to be included within the narrow limits of a margin, 
I commit it to a slip of paper, and deposit it between the leaves ; 
taking care to secure it by an imperceptible portion of gum trag- 
acanth paste. 

All this may be whim ; it may be not only a very hackneyed, 
but a very idle practice ; — yet I persist in it still ; and it affords 
me pleasure ; which is profit, in despite of Mr. Bentham with 
Mr. Mill on his back. 

This making of notes, however, is by no means the making of 
mere memoranda — a custom which has its disadvantages, beyond 
doubt. " Ce que je mets sur papier" says Bernardin de St. Pierre, 
"je remets de ma memoire, et par consequence je Voublie ;" — and, 
in fact, if you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note 
that this thing is to be remembered. 

But the purely marginal jottings, done with no eye to the 
Memorandum Book, have a distinct complexion, and not only a 
distinct purpose, but none at all ; this it is which imparts to them 
a value. They have a rank somewhat above the chance and de- 
sultory comments of literary chit-chat — for these latter are not 
unfrequently " talk for talk's sake," hurried out of the mouth ; 
while the marginalia are deliberately penciled, because the mind 
of the reader wishes to unburthen itself of a thought — however 



484 MARGINALIA. 



flippant — however silly — however trivial — still a thought indeed, 
not merely a thing that might have been a thought in time, and 
under more favorable circumstances. In the marginalia, too, we 
talk only to ourselves ; we therefore talk freshly — boldly — origin- 
ally — with abandonnement — without conceit — much after the 
fashion of Jeremy Taylor, and Sir Thomas Browne, and Sir Wil- 
liam Temple, and the anatomical Burton, and that most logical 
analogist, Butler, and some other people of the old day, who 
were too full of their matter to have any room for their manner, 
which being thus left out of question, was a capital manner, in- 
deed — a model of manners, with a richly marginalic air. 

The circumscription of space, too, in these pencilings, has in it 
something more of advantage than inconvenience. It compels us 
(whatever difFuseness of idea we may clandestinely entertain) into 
Montesquieu-ism, into Tacitus-ism, (here I leave out of view the 
concluding portion of the " Annals,") — or even into Carlyle-ism 
— a thing which, I have been told, is not to be confounded with 
your ordinary affectation and bad grammar. I say " bad gram- 
mar," through sheer obstinacy, because the grammarians (who 
should know better) insist upon it that I should not. But then 
grammar is not what these grammarians will have it ; and, being 
merely the analysis of language, with the result of this analysis, 
must be good or bad just as the analyst is sage Or silly — just as 
he is a Home Tooke or a Cobbett. 

But to our sheep. During a rainy afternoon, not long ago, 
being in a mood too listless for continuous study, I sought relief 
from ennui in dipping here and there, at random, among the vol- 
umes of my library — no very large one, certainly, but sufficiently 
miscellaneous ; and, I flatter myself, not a little recherche. 

Perhaps it was what the Germans call the " brain-scattering " 
humor of the moment ; but, while the picturesqueness of the nu- 
merous pencil-scratches arrested my attention, their helter-skelter- 
iness of commentary amused me. I found myself, at length, 
forming a wish that it had been some other hand than my own 
which had so bedevilled the books, and fancying that, in such 
case, I might have derived no inconsiderable pleasure from turn- 
ing them over. From this the transition-thought (as Mr. Lyell, 
or Mr. Murchison, or Mr. Featherstonhaugh would have it) was 



MARGINALIA. 485 



natural enough : — there might be something even in my scribblings 
which, for the mere sake of scribbling, would have interest for 
others. 

The main difficulty respected the mode of transferring the notes 
from the volumes — the context from the text — without detriment 
to that exceedingly frail fabric of intelligibility in which the con- 
text was imbedded. With all appliances to boot, with the printed 
pages at their back, the commentaries were too often like Dodo- 
na's oracles — or those of Lycophron Tenebrosus — or the essays 
of the pedant's pupils, in Quintillian, which were "necessarily 
excellent, since even he (the pedant) found it impossible to com- 
prehend them :" — what, then, would become of it — this context 
— if transferred ? — if translated ? Would it not rather be traduit 
(traduced) which is the French synonyme, or overzezet (turned 
topsy-turvy) which is the Dutch one ? 

I concluded, at length, to put extensive faith in the acumen 
and imagination of the reader : — this as a general rule. But, in 
some instances, where even faith would not remove mountains, 
there seemed no safer plan than so to re-model the note as to 
convey at least the ghost of a conception as to what it was all 
about. Where, for such conception, the text itself was absolutely 
necessary, I could quote it ; where the title of the book com- 
mented upon was indispensable, I could name it. In short, like 
a novel-hero dilemma'd, I made up my mind " to be guided by 
circumstances," in default of more satisfactory rules of conduct. 

As for the multitudinous opinion expressed in the subjoined 
farrago — as for my present assent to all, or dissent from any por- 
tion of it — as to the possibility of my having, in some instances, 
altered my mind — or as to the impossibility of my not having 
altered it often — these are points upon which I say nothing, be- 
cause upon these there can be nothing cleverly said. It may be 
as well to observe, however, that just as the goodness of your 
true pun is in the direct ratio of its intolerability, so is nonsense 
the essential sense of the Marginal Note. 



MARGINALIA. 



I. 

One of the happiest examples, in a small way, of the carrying- 
one's-self-in-a-hand-basket logic, is to be found in a London weekly 
paper, called " The Popular Record of Modern Science ; a Jour- 
nal of Philosophy and General Information." This work has a 
vast circulation, and is respected by eminent men. Sometime in 
November, 1845, it copied from the "Columbian Magazine," of 
New York, a rather adventurous article of mine, called " Mes- 
meric Revelation." It had the impudence, also, to spoil the title 
by improving it to " The Last Conversation of a Somnambule " 
— a phrase that is nothing at all to the purpose, since the person 
who " converses" is not a somnambule. He is a sleep- waker — 
not a sleep-walker ; but I presume that "The Record" thought 
it was only the difference of an I. What I chiefly complain of, 
however, is that the London editor prefaced my paper with these 
words : — " The following is an article communicated to the Co- 
lumbian Magazine, a journal of respectability and influence in the 
United States, by Mr. Edgar A. Poe. It bears internal evidence 
of authenticity. ." ! There is no subject under heaven about which 
funnier ideas are, in general, entertained than about this subject 
of internal evidence. It is by " internal evidence," observe, that 
we decide upon the mind. But to " The Record :" — On the issue 
of my " Valdemar Case," this journal copies it, as a matter of 
course, and (also as a matter of course) improves the title, as in 
the previous instance. But the editorial comments may as well 
be called profound. Here they are : 

The following narrative appears in a recent number of Tlie American 
Magazine, a respectable periodical in the United States. It comes, it will 
be observed, from the narrator of the " Last Conversation of a Somnambule," 
published in The Record of the 29th of November. In extracting this case 
the Morning Post, of Monday last, takes what it considers the ^afe side, by 
remarking — " For our own parts we do not believe it ; and there are several 
statements made, more especially with regard to the disease of which the 
patient died, which at once prove the case to be either a fabrication, or the 
work of one little acquainted with consumption. The story, however, is 
wonderful, and we therefore give it." The editor, however, does not point 
out the especial statements which are inconsistent with what Ave know of 
the progress of consumption, and as few scientific persons would be willing 
to take their pathology any more than their logic from the Morning Post, 
his caution, it is to be feared, will not have much weight. The reason as- 
signed by the Post for publishing the account is quaint, and would apply 
equally to an adventure from Baron Munchausen : — " it is wonderful and we 
therefore give it." . . . The above case is obviously one that cannot be 



MARGINALIA. 487 



received except on the strongest testimony, and it is equally clear that the 
testimony by which it is at present accompanied, is not of that character. 
The most favorable circumstances in support of it, consist in the fact that 
credence is understood to be given to it at New York, within a few miles of 
which city the affair took place, and where consequently the most ready 
means must be found for its authentication or disproval. The initials of the 
medical men and of the young medical student must be sufficient in the im- 
mediate locality, to establish their identity, especially as M. Valdemar was 
well known, and had been no long ill as to render it out of the question that 
there should be any difficulty in ascertaining the names of the physicians 
by whom he had been attended. In the same way the nurses and servants 
under whose cognizance the case must have come during the seven months 
which it occupied, are of course accessible to all sorts of inquiries. It will, 
therefore, appear that there must have been too many parties concerned to 
render prolonged deception practicable. The angry excitement and various 
rumors which have at length rendered a public statement necessary, are also 
sufficient to show that something extraordinary must have taken place. On 
the other hand there is no strong point for disbelief. The circumstances are, 
as the Post says, " wonderful ;" but so are all circumstances that come to our 
knowledge for the first time — and in Mesmerism everything is new. An 
objection may be made that the article has rather a Magazinish air ; Mr. 
Poe having evidently written with a view to effect, and so as to excite rather 
than to subdue the vague appetite for the mysterious and the horrible which 
such a case, under any circumstances, is sure to awaken — but apart from this 
there is nothing to deter a philosophic mind from further inquiries regarding 
it. It is a matter entirely for testimony. [So it is.] Under this view we 
shall take steps to procure from some of the most intelligent and influential 
citizens of New York all the evidence that can be had upon the subject. No 
steamer will leave England for America till the 3d of February, but witlun 
a few weeks of that time we doubt not it will be possible to lay before the 
readers of the Record information which will enable them to come to a pretty 
accurate conclusion. 

Yes ; and no doubt they came to one accurate enough, in the 
end. But all this rigmarole is what people call testing a thing 
by "internal evidence." The Record insists upon the truth of 
the story because of certain facts — because " the initials of the 
young men must be sufficient to establish their identity " — be- 
cause " the nurses must be accessible to all sorts of inquiries " — 
and because the " angry excitement and various rumors which at 
length rendered a public statement necessary, are sufficient to 
show that something extraordinary mtist have taken place." To 
be sure ! The story is proved by these facts — the facts about the 
students, the nurses, the excitement, the credence given the tale 
at New York. And now all we have to do is to prove these facts. 
Ah ! — they are proved by the story. As for the Morning Post, it 
evinces more weakness in its disbelief than the Record in its cre- 
dulity. What the former says about doubting on account of in- 



4«8 MARGINALIA. 



accuracy in the detail of the phthisical symptoms, is a mere fetch, 
as the Cockneys have it, in order to make a very few little child- 
ren believe that it, the Post, is not quite so stupid as a post pro- 
verbially is. It knows nearly as much about pathology as it does 
about English grammar — and I really hope it will not feel called 
upon to blush at the compliment. I represented the symptoms 
of M. Valdemar as "severe," to be sure. I put an extreme case ; 
for it was necessary that I should leave on the reader's mind no 
doubt as to the certainty of death without the aid of the Mes- 
merist — but such symptoms might have appeared — the identical 
symptoms have appeared, and will be presented again and again. 
Had the Post been only half as honest as ignorant, it would have 
owned that it disbelieved for no reason more profound than that 
which influences all dunces in disbelieving — it would have owned 
that it doubted the thing merely because the thing was a " won- 
derful " thing, and had never yet been printed in a book. 

II 
We mere men of the world, with no principle — a very old 
fashioned and cumbersome thing — should be on our guard lest, 
fancying him on his last legs, we insult, or otherwise maltreat 
some poor devil of a genius at the very instant of his putting his 
foot on the top round of his ladder of triumph. It is a common 
trick with these fellows, when on the point of attaining some long- 
cherished end, to sink themselves into the deepest possible abyss 
of seeming despair, for no other purpose than that of increasing 
the space of success through which they have made up their 
minds immediately to soar. 

Mr. Hudson, among innumerable blunders, attributes to Sir 
Thomas Brown, the paradox of Tertullian in his De Came Christi 
— " Mortunus est Dei jilus, credible est quia ineptum est; et sepul- 
tus resurrexit, certum est quia impossibile est. v 

IV. 

After reading all that has been written, and after thinking 
all that can be thought, on the topics of God and the soul, 
the man who has a right to say that he thinks at all, will rind 
himself face to face with the conclusion that, on these topics, the 
most profound thought is that which can be the least easily dis- 
tinguished from the most superficial sentiment. 



MARGINALIA. 489 



V. 

That punctuation is important all agree ; but how few com- 
prehend the extent of its importance ! The writer who neglects 
punctuation, or mis-punctuates, is liable to be misunderstood — 
this, according to the popular idea, is the sum of the evils arising 
from heedlessness or ignorance. It does not seem to be known 
that, even where the sense is perfectly clear, a sentence may be 
deprived of half its force — its spirit — its point — by improper 
punctuations. For the want of merely a comma, it often occurs 
than an axiom appears a paradox, or that a sarcasm is converted 
into a sermonoid. There is no treatise on the topic — and there is 
no topic on which a treatise is more needed. There seems to exist 
a vulgar notion that the subject is one of pure conventionality, 
and cannot be brought within the limits of intelligible and COn- 
sistent rule. And yet, if fairly looked in the face, the whole mat- 
ter is so plain that its rationale may be read as we run. If not 
anticipated, I shall hereafter, make an attempt at a magazine pa- 
per on " The Philosophy of Point." In the meantime let me say 
a word or two of the dash. Every writer for the press, who has 
any sense of the accurate, must have been frequently mortified 
and vexed at the distortion of his sentences by the printer's now 
general substitution of a semicolon, or comma, for the dash of the 
MS. The total or nearly total disuse of the latter point, has been 
brought about by the revulsion consequent upon its excessive 
employment about twenty years ago. The Byronic poets were 
all dash. John Neal, in his earlier novels, exaggerated its use 
into the grossest abuse — although his very error arose from the 
philosophical and self-dependent spirit which has always distin- 
guished him, and which will even yet lead him, if I am not greatly 
mistaken in the man, to do something for the literature of the 
country which the country " will not willingly," and cannot pos- 
sibly, " let die." Without entering now into the why, let me ob- 
serve that the printer may always ascertain when the dash of the 
MS. is properly and when improperly employed, by bearing in 
mind that this point represents a second thought — an emendation. 
In using it just above I have exemplified its use. The words " an 
emendation " are, speaking with reference to grammatical construc- 
tion, put in apposition with the words " a second thought." Hav- 

21* 



490 MARGINALIA. 



inp; written these latter words, I reflected whether it would not be 
possible to render their meaning more distinct by certain other 
words. Now, instead of erasing the phrase " a second thought," 
which is of some use — which partially conveys the idea intended 
— which advances me a step toward my full purpose — I suffer it 
to remain, and merely put a dash between it and the phrase " an 
emendation." The dash gives the reader a choice between two, 
or among three or more expressions, one of which may be more 
forcible than another, but all of which help out the idea. It stands, 
in general, for these words — or, to make my meaning more dis- 
tinct.' 1 '' This force it has — and this force no other point can have; 
since all other points have well-understood uses quite different 
from this. Therefore, the dash cannot be dispensed with. It has 
its phases — its variation of the force described; but the one prin- 
ciple — that of second thought or emendation — will be found at 

the bottom of all. 

VI. 
Diana's Temple at Ephesus having been burnt on the night 
in which Alexander was born, some person observed that " it 
was no wonder, since, at the period of the conflagration, she 
was gossiping at Pella." Cicero commends this as a witty con- 
ceit — Plutarch condems it as senseless — and this is the one point 
in which I agree with the biographer. 

VII. 
Until we analyze a religion, or a philosophy, in respect 
of its inducements, independently of its rationality, we shall never 
be in condition to estimate that religion, or that philosophy, by 
the mere number of its adherents : — unluckily, 
No Indian Prince has to his palace 
More followers than a thief to the gallows. 
VIII. 
" If in any point," says Lord Bacon, " I have receded from 
what is commonly received, it hath been for the purpose of 
proceeding melius and not in aliud " — but the character assumed, 
in general, by modern " Reform" is, simply, that of Opposition. 

IX. 
A strong argument for the religion of Christ is this — that of- 
fences against Charity are about the only ones which men on their 
death-beds can be made — not to understand — but to/eel — as crime. 



MARGINALIA. 491 



X. 

The effect derivable from well-managed rhyme is very imper- 
fectly understood. Conventionally " rhyme" implies merely close 
similarity of sound at the ends of verse, and it is really curious to 
observe how long mankind have been content with their limita- 
tion of the idea. What, in rhyme, first and principally pleases, 
may be referred to the human sense or appreciation of equality — 
the common element, as might be easily shown, of all the gratifi- 
cation we derive from music in its most extended sense — very 
especially in its modifications of metre and rhythm. We see, for 
example, a crystal, and are immediately interested by the equality 
between the sides and angles of one of its faces — but, on brino-ing 
to view a second face, in all respects similar to the first, our plea- 
sure seems to be squared — on bringing to view a third, it ap- 
pears to be cubed, and so on : I have no doubt, indeed, that the 
delight experienced, if measurable, would be found to have exact 
mathematical relations, such, or nearly such, as I suggest — that is 
to say, as far as a certain point, beyond which there would be a 
decrease, in similar relations. Now here, as the ultimate result 
of analysis, we reach the sense of mere equality, or rather the hu- 
man delight in this sense ; and it was an instinct, rather than a 
clear comprehension of this delight as a principle, which, in the 
first instance, led the poet to attempt an increase of the effect 
arising from the mere similarity (that is so say equality) between 
two sounds — led him, I say, to attempt increasing this effect by 
making a secondary equalization, in placing the rhymes at equal 
distances — that is, at the ends of lines of equal length. In this 
manner, rhyme and the termination of the line grew connected in 
men's thoughts — grew into a conventionalism — the principle being 
lost sight of altogether. And it was simply because Pindaric 
verses had, before this epoch, existed — i. e. verses of unequal 
length — that rhymes were subsequently found at unequal dis- 
tances. It was for this reason solely, I say — for none more pro- 
found. Rhyme had come to be regarded as of right appertaining 
to the end of verse — and here we complain that the matter has 
finally rested. But it is clear that there was much more to be 
considered. So far,- the sense of equality alone, entered the 
effect ; or, if this equality was slightly varied, it was varied only 



492 MARGINALIA. 



through an accident — the accident of the existence of Pindaric 
metres. It will be seen that the rhymes were always anticipated. 
The eye, catching the end of a verse, whether long or short, ex- 
pected, for the ear, a rhyme. The great element of unexpected- 
ness was not dreamed of — that is to say, of novelty — of originality. 
"But," says Lord Bacon, (how justly!) "there is no exquisite 
beauty without some strangeness in the proportions." Take away 
this element of strangeness — of unexpectedness — of novelty — of 
originality — call it what we will — and all that is ethereal in love- 
liness is lost at once. We lose — we miss the unknown — the 
vague — the uncomprehended because offered before we have time 
to examine and comprehend. We lose, in short, all that assimi- 
lates the beauty of earth with what we dream of the beauty of 
Heaven. Perfection of rhyme is attainable only in the combina- 
tion of the two elements, Equality and Unexpectedness. But as 
evil cannot exist without good, so unexpectedness must arise from 
expectedness. We do not contend for mere arbitrariness of rhyme. 
In the first place, we must have equi-distant or regularly recur- 
ring rhymes, to form the basis, expectedness, out of which arises 
the element, unexpectedness, by the introduction of rhymes, not 
arbitrarily, but with an eye to the greatest amount of unexpected- 
ness. We should not introduce them, for example, at such points 
that the entire line is a multiple of the syllables preceding the 
points. When, for instance, I write — 

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain, 
I produce more, to be sure, but not remarkably more than the 
ordinary effect of rhymes regularly recurring at the ends of lines ; 
for the number of syllables in the whole verse is merely a mul- 
tiple of the number of syllables preceding the rhyme introduced 
at the middle, and there is still left, therefore, a certain degree of 
expectedness. What there is of the element, unexpectedness, is 
addressed, in fact, to the eye only — for the ear divides the verse 
into two ordinary lines, thus: 

And the silken, sad, uncertain 
Rustling of each purple curtain. 

I obtain, however, the whole effect of unexpectedness, when I 
write — 

Thrilled me, filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before. 



MARGINALIA. 493 



N. B. It is very commonly supposed that rhyme, as it now 

ordinarily exists, is of modern invention — but see the " Clouds 

of Aristophanes." Hebrew verse, however, did not include it — 

the terminations of the lines, where most distinct, never showing 

any thing of the kind. 

XL 

Paulus Jovius, living in those benighted times when diamond- 
pointed styluses were as yet unknown, thought proper, never- 
theless, to speak of his goosequill as " aliquando ferreus, au- 
reus aliquando" — intending, of course, a mere figure of speech ; 
and from the class of modern authors who use really nothing to 
write with but steel and gold, some, no doubt, will let their pens, 
vice versa, descend to posterity under the designation of " anse- 
rine" — of course, intending always a mere figure of speech. 

XII. 

The Carlyle-ists should adopt, as a motto, the inscription 
on the old bell from whose metal was cast the Great Tom, 
of Oxford : — " In Thomw laude resono ' Bim ! Bom !' sine 
fraude :" — and " Bim ! Bom," in such case, would be a marvel- 
lous " echo of sound to sense." 

XIII. 

An infinity of error makes its way into our Philosophy, 

through Man's habit of considering himself a citizen of a world 

solely — of an individual planet — instead of at least occasionally 

contemplating his position as cosmopolite proper — as a denizen 

of the universe. 

XIV. 

Talking of puns: — "Why do they not give us quail for din- 
ner, as usual ?" demanded Count Fessis, the other day, of 
H , the classicist and sportsman. 

" Because at this season," replied H , who was dozing, — 

" qualis sopor fessis.' 1 (Quail is so poor, Fessis.) 

XV. 

The German " Schwarmerei " — not exactly " humbug," but 
" sky-rocketing" — seems to be the only term by which we can 
conveniently designate that peculiar style of criticism which 
has lately come into fashion, through the influence of certain 
members of the Fabian family — people who live (upon beans) 
about Boston. 



494 MARGINALIA. 



XVI. 

Some Frenchman — possibly Montaigne — says : " People talk 
about thinking, but for my part I never think, except when 
I sit down to write." It is this never thinking, unless when we 
sit down to write, which is the cause of so much indifferent com- 
position. But perhaps there is something more involved in the 
Frenchman's observation than meets the eye. It is certain that 
the mere act of inditing, tends, in a great degree, to the logicali- 
zation of thought. Whenever, on account of its vagueness, I am 
dissatisfied with a conception of the brain, I resort forthwith to 
the pen, for the purpose of obtaining, through its aid, the neces- 
sary form, consequence and precision. 

How very commonly we hear it remarked, that such and such 
thoughts are beyond the compass of words ! I do not believe 
that any thought, properly so called, is out of the reach of lan- 
guage. I fancy, rather, that where difficulty in expression is 
experienced, there is, in the intellect which experiences it, a want 
either of deliberateness or of method. For my own part, I have 
never had a thought which I could not set down in words, with 
even more distinctness than that with which I conceived it : — as I 
have before observed, the thought is logicalized by the effort at 
(written) expression. There is, however, a class of fancies, of ex- 
quisite delicacy, which are not thoughts, and to which, as yet, I 
have found it absolutely impossible to adapt language. I use the 
word fancies at random, and merely because I must use some 
word ; but the idea commonly attached to the term is not even 
remotely applicable to the shadows of shadows in question. They 
seem to me rather psychal than intellectual. They arise in the 
soul (alas, how rarely !) only at its epochs of most intense tran- 
quillity — when the bodily and mental health are in perfection — 
and at those mere points of time where the confines of the waking 
world blend with those of the world of dreams. I am aware of 
these " fancies " only when I am upon the very brink of sleep, with 
the consciousness that I am so. I have satisfied myself that this 
condition exists but for an inappreciable point of time — yet it is 
crowded with these " shadows of shadows ;" and for absolute 
thought there is demanded time's endurance. These " fancies " 
have in them a pleasurable ecstacy, as far beyond the most plea- 



MARGINALIA. 495 



surable of the world of wakefulness, or of dreams, as the heaven 
of the Northman theology is beyond its hell. I regard the 
visions, even as they arise, with an awe which, in some measure, 
moderates or tranquillizes the ecstacy — I so regard them, through 
a conviction (which seems a portion of the ecstacy itself) that this 
ecstacy, in itself, is of a character supernal to the human nature — 
is a glimpse of the spirit's outer world ; and I arrive at this con- 
clusion — if this term is at all applicable to instantaneous intuition 
by a perception that the delight experienced has, as its element, 
but the absoluteness of novelty. I say the absoluteness — for in 
these fancies — let me now term them psychal impressions — there 
is really nothing even approximate in character to impressions 
ordinarily received. It is as if the five senses were supplanted by 
five myriad others alien to mortality. 

Now, so entire is my faith in the power of words, that, at 
times, I have believed it possible to embody even the evanescence 
of fancies such as I have attempted to describe. In experiments 
with this end in view, I have proceeded so far as, first, to control 
(when the bodily and mental health are good) the existence of 
the condition : — that is to say, .1 can now (unless when ill) be 
sure that the condition will supervene, if I so wish it, at the point 
of time already described : — of its supervention, until lately, I 
could never be certain, even under the most favorable circum- 
stances. I mean to say, merely, that now I can be sure, when all 
circumstances are favorable, of the supervention of the condition, 
and feel even the capacity of inducing or compelling it : — the fa- 
vorable circumstances, however, are not the less rare — else had I 
compelled, already, the heaven into the earth. 

I have proceeded so far, secondly, as to prevent the lapse from 
the point of which I speak — the point of blending between wake- 
fulness and sleep — as to prevent at will, I say, the lapse from this 
border-ground into the dominion of sleep. Not that I can con- 
tinue the condition — not that I can render the point more than a 
point — but that I can startle myself from the point into wakeful- 
ness ; and thus transfer the point itself into the realm of Memory ; 
convey its impressions, or more properly their recollections, to a 
situation where (although still for a very brief period) I can sur- 
vey them with the eye of analysis. For these reasons — that is to 



496 MARGINALIA. 



say, because I have been enabled to accomplish thus much — I do 
not altogether despair of embodying in words at least enough of 
the fancies in question to convey, to certain classes of intellect, a 
shadowy conception of their character. In saying this I am not 
to be understood as supposing that the fancies, or psychal impres- 
sions, to which I allude, are confined to my individual self — are 
not, in a word, common to all mankind — for on this point it is 
quite impossible that I should form an opinion — but nothing can 
be more certain than that even a partial record of the impressions 
would startle the universal intellect of mankind, by the supreme- 
ness of the novelty of the material employed, and of its consequent 
suggestions. In a word — should I ever write a paper on this 
topic, the world will be compelled to acknowledge that, at last, I 
have done an original thing. 

XVII. 

In the way of original, striking, and well-sustained metaphor, 
we can call to mind few finer things than this — to be found 
in James Puckle's " Gray Cap for a Green head :" " In speaking 
of the dead, so fold up your discourse that their virtues may be 
outwardly shown, while their vices are wrapped up in silence." 

XVIII 

Talking of inscriptions — how admirable was the one circu- 
lated at Paris, for the equestrian statue of Louis XV., done by 
Pigal and Bouchardon — " Statua Statuce." 

XIX. 

" This is right," says Epicurus, " precisely because the peo- 
ple are displeased with it." 

" II y a a parier" says Chamfort — one of the KamJcars of 
Mirabeau — " que toute idee publique — toute convention regue — 
est une sottise car elle a convenue au plus grand nombreP 

" Si proficere cupis? says the great African bishop, " primo id 

verum puta quod sana mens omnium hominum attestatur." 

Now, 

Who shall decide where Doctors disagree ? 

To me it appears that, in all ages, the most preposterous falsi- 
ties have been received as truths by at least the mens omnium 
hominum. As for the sana mens — how are we ever to determine 
what that is ? 



MARGINALIA. 497 



XX. 

This book* could never have been popular out of Germa- 
ny. It is too simple — too direct — too obvious — too bold — not 
sufficiently complex — to be relished by any people who have tho- 
roughly passed the first (or impulsive) epoch of literary civiliza- 
tion. The Germans have not yet passed this first epoch. It must 
be remembered that during the whole of the middle ages they lived 
in utter ignorance of the art of writing. From so total a dark- 
ness, of so late a date, they could not, as a nation, have as yet 
fully emerged into the second or critical epoch. Individual Ger- 
mans have been critical in the best sense — but the masses are un- 
leavened. Literary Germany thus presents the singular spectacle 
of the impulsive spirit surrounded by the critical, and, of course, 
in some measure influenced thereby. England, for example, has 
advanced far, and France much farther, into the critical epoch ; 
and their effect on the German mind is seen in the wildly anoma- 
lous condition of the German literature at large. That this 
latter will be improved by age, however, should never be main- 
tained. As the impulsive spirit subsides, and the critical uprises, 
there will appear the polished insipidity of the later England, or 
that ultimate throe of taste which has found its best exemplifica- 
tion in Sue. At present the German literature resembles no other 
on the face of the earth — for it is the result of certain conditions 
which, before this individual instance of their fulfilment, have 
never been fulfilled. And this anomalous state to which I refer 
is the source of our anomalous criticism upon what that state pro- 
duces — is the source of the grossly conflicting opinions about Ger- 
man letters. For my own part, I admit the German vigor, the 
German directness, boldness, imagination, and some other qualities 
of impulse, just as I am willing to admit and admire these quali- 
ties in the first (or impulsive) epochs of British and French letters. 
At the German criticism, however, I cannot refrain from laughing 
all the more heartily, all the more seriously I hear it praised. Not 
that, in detail, it affects me as an absurdity — but in the adaptation 
of its details. It abounds in brilliant bubbles of suggestion, but 
these rise and sink and jostle each other, until the whole vortex 

* " Thiodolf, the Icelander and Aslauga's Knight." No. 60 of Wiley <fe 
Putnam's Foreign Series of " The Library of Choice Reading." 



498 MARGINALIA. 



of thought in which they originate is one indistinguishable chaos 
of froth. The German criticism is unsettled, and can only be 
settled by time. At present it suggests without demonstrating, 
or convincing, or effecting any definite purpose under the sun. 
We read it, rub our foreheads, and ask " What then ?" I am not 
ashamed to say that I prefer even Voltaire to Goethe, and hold 
Macaulay to possess more of the true critical spirit than Augustus 
William and Frederick Schlegel combined. " Thiodolf " is called 
by Foque his " most successful work." He would not have spo- 
ken thus had he considered it his best. It is admirable of its kind 
— but its kind can never be appreciated by Americans. It will 
affect them much as would a grasp of the hand from a man of 
ice. Even the exquisite " Undine '' is too chilly for our people, 
and, generally, for our epoch. We have less imagination and 
warmer sympathies than the age which preceded us. It would 
have done Foque more ready and fuller justice than ours. Has 
any one remarked the striking similarity in tone between " Un- 
dine" and the " Libussa" of Musceus ? 

XXI. 
What can be more soothing, at once to a man's Pride and 
to his Conscience, than the conviction that, in taking ven- 
geance on his enemies for injustice done him, he has simply to do 
them justice in return ? 

XXII. 

Bielfeld, the author of " Les Premiers Traits de IS Erudition 
Universelle" defines poetry as "Tart d'exprimer les pensees 
par la fiction" The Germans have two works in full accordance 
with this definition, absurd as it is — the terms Dichtkunst, the 
art of fiction, and Dichten, to feign — which are generally used for 
poetry and to make verses. 

XXIII. 
Brown, in his " Amusements," speaks of having transfused 
the blood of an ass into the veins of an astrological quack — 
and there can be no doubt that one of Hague's progenitors was 
the man. 

XXIV. 

The chief portion of Professor Espy's theory has been antici- 
pated by Roger bacon. 



MARGINALIA. 499 



XXV. 

Whatever may be the merits or demerits, generally, of the 
Magazine Literature of America, there can be no question as 
to its extent or influence. The Topic — Magazine Literature — is 
therefore an important one. In a few years its importance will be 
found to have increased in geometrical ratio. The whole tendency 
of the age is Magazine-ward. The Quarterly Reviews have never 
been popular. Not only are they too stilted, (by way of keeping up a 
due dignity,) but they make a point, with the same end in view, 
of discussing only topics which are caviare to the many, and which, 
for the most part, have only a conventional interest even with the 
few. Their issues, also, are at too long intervals ; their subjects 
get cold before being served up. In a word, their ponderosity is 
quite out of keeping with the rush of the age. We now demand 
the light artillery of the intellect ; we need the curt, the condens- 
ed, the pointed, the readily diffused — in place of the verbose, the 
detailed, the voluminous, the inaccessible. On the other hand, 
the lightness of the artillery should not degenerate into popgun- 
nery — by which term we may designate the character of the 
greater portion of the newspaper -press — their sole legitimate ob- 
ject being the discussion of ephemeral matters in an ephemeral 
manner. Whatever talent may be brought to bear upon our daily 
journals, and in many cases this talent is very great, still the im- 
perative necessity of catching, currente calamo, each topic as it 
flits before the eye of the public, must of course materially narrow 
the limits of their power. The bulk and the period of issue of 
the monthly magazines, seem to be precisely adapted, if not to all 
the literary wants of the day, at least to the largest and most 
imperative, as well as the most consequential portion of them. 

XXVI. 

My friend , can never commence what he fancies a poem 

(he is a fanciful man, after all) without first elaborately " invo- 
king the Muses." Like so many she-dogs of John of Nivelles, 
however, the more he invokes them, the more they decline 

obeying the invocation. 

XXVII. 

The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it 
can be quietly led. 



500 MARGINALIA. 



XXVIII. 
There lies a deep and sealed well 

Within yon leafy forest hid, 
Whose pent and lonely waters swell 

Its confines chill and drear amid. 

This putting the adjective after the noun is, merely, an inexcu- 
sable Gallicism ; but the putting the preposition after the noun is 
alien to all language, and in opposition to all its principles. Such 
things, in general, serve only to betray the versifier's poverty of 
resource ; and, when an inversion of this kind occurs, we say to 
ourselves, " Here the poet lacked the skill to make out his line 
without distorting the natural or colloquial order of the words." 
Now and then, however, we must refer the error not to deficiency 
of skill, but to something far less defensible — to an idea that such 
things belong to the essence of poetry — that it needs them to dis- 
tinguish it from prose — that we are poetical, in a word, very much 
in the ratio of our unprosaicalness at these points. Even while 
employing the phrase " poetic license," — a phrase which has to 
answer for an infinity of sins — people who think in this way seem 
to have an indistinct conviction that the license in question in- 
volves a necessity of being adopted. The true artist will avail 
himself of no "license" whatever. The very word will disgust 
him ; for it says — " Since you seem unable to manage without 
these peccadillo advantages, you must have them, I suppose ; and 
the world, half-shutting its eyes, will do its best not to see the 
awkwardness which they stamp upon your poem." 

Few things have greater tendency than inversion, to render 
verse feeble and ineffective. In most cases where a line is spoken 
of as " forcible," the force may be referred to directness of expres- 
sion. A vast majority of the passages which have become house- 
hold through frequent quotation, owe their popularity either to 
this directness, or, in general, to the scorn of " poetic license." 
In short, as regards verbal construction, the more prosaic a poet- 
ical style is, the better. Through this species of prosaicism, Cow- 
per, with scarcely one of the higher poetical elements, came very 
near making his age fancy him the equal of Pope ; and to the 
same cause are attributable three-fourths of that unusual point 
and force for which Moore is distinguished. It is the prosaicism 
of these two writers to which is owing their especial quotability. 



MARGINALIA. 501 



XXIX. 

The Reverend Arthur Coxe's "Saul, a Mystery," having been con- 
demned in no measured terms by Poe, of " The Broadway Journal," and 
Green of " The Emporium," a writer in the " Hartford Columbian" retorts as 
follows : 

An entertaining history, 
Entitled " Saul, a Mystery," 
Has recently been published by the Reverend Arthur Coxe. 
The poem is dramatic, 
And the wit of it is attic, 
And its teachings are emphatic of the doctrines orthodox. 

But Mr. Poe, the poet, 
Declares he cannot go it — 

That the book is very stupid, or something of that sort . 
And Green, of the Empori- 
um, tells a kindred story, 

And swears like any tory that it is'nt worth a groat. 

But maugre all the croaking 

Of the Raven and the joking 
Of the verdant little fellow of the used to be review, 

The People, in derision 

Of their impudent decision, 
Have declared, without division, that the Mystery will do. 

The truth, of course, rather injures an epigram than otherwise ; 
and nobody will think the worse of the one above, when I say 
that, at the date of its first appearance, I had expressed no opin- 
ion whatever of the poem to which it refers. " Give a dog a bad 
name," &c. Whenever a book is abused, people take it for grant- 
ed that it is / who have been abusing it. 

Latterly I have read " Saul," and agree with the epigrammatist, 
that it " will do " — whoever attempts to wade through it. It will 
do, also, for trunk-paper. The author is right in calling it u A 
Mystery :" — for a most unfathomable mystery it is. When I got 
to the end of it, I found it more mysterious than ever — and it was 
really a mystery how I ever did get to the end — which I half fan- 
cied that somebody had cut off, in a fit of ill-will to the critics. 
I have heard not a syllable about the " Mystery," of late days. 
"The People" seem to have forgotten it ; and Mr. Coxe's friends 
should advertise it under the head of " Mysterious Disappearance" 
— that is to say, the disappearance of a Mystery. 

XXX. 

The vox populi, so much talked about to so little purpose, is, 
possibly, that very vox et preterea nihil which the countryman, in 
Catullus, mistook for a nightingale. 



502 MARGINALIA. 



XXXI 

The 'pure Imagination chooses, from either Beauty or De- 
formity, only the most combinable things hitherto uncombined ; 
the compound, as a general rule, partaking, in character, of beauty, 
or sublimity, in the ratio of the respective beauty or sublimity of 
the things combined — which are themselves still to be considered 
as atomic — that is to say, as previous combinations. But, as often 
analogously happens in physical chemistry, so not unfrequently 
does it occur in this chemistry of the intellect, that the admixture 
of two elements results in a something that has nothing of the 
qualities of one of them, or even nothing of the qualities of 
either. . . Thus, the range of Imagination is unlimited. Its 
materials extend throughout the universe. Even out of deformi- 
ties it fabricates that Beauty which is at once its sole object and 
its inevitable test. But, in general, the richness or force of the 
matters combined ; the facility of discovering combinable novelties 
worth combining ; and, especially, the absolute " chemical combi- 
nation" of the completed mass — are the particulars to be regarded 
in our estimate of Imagination. It is this thorough harmony of 
an imaginative work which so often causes it to be undervalued 
by the thoughtless, through the character of obviousness which is 
superinduced. We are apt to find ourselves asking why it is that 
these combinations have never been imagined before. 

XXXII. 

In examining trivial details, we are apt to overlook essential 
generalities. Thus M , in making a to-do about the " typo- 
graphical mistakes" in his book, has permitted the printer to 
escape a scolding which he did richly deserve — a scolding for a 
" typographical mistake " of really vital importance — the mistake 
of having printed the book at all. 

XXXIII. 

It has been well said of the French orator, Dupin, that " he 
spoke, as nobody else, the language of everybody ;" and thus 
his manner seems to be exactly conversed in that of the Frog- 
pondian Euphuists, who, on account of the familiar tone in which 
they lisp their outre phrases, may be said to speak, as everybody, 
the language of nobody — that is to say, a language emphatically 
their own. 



MARGINALIA. 503 



XXXIV. 

He (Bulwer) is the most accomplished writer of the most accom- 
plished era of English Letters ; practising all styles and classes of composi- 
tion, and eminent in all — novelist, dramatist, poet, historian, moral philoso- 
pher, essayist, critic, political pamphleteer ; — in each superior to all others, 
and only rivalled in each by himself. — Ward — author of " Iremaine? 

The " only rivalled in each by himself," here, puts me in mind 
of 

None but himself can be his parallel. 

But surely Mr. Ward (who, although he did write " De Vere," 
is by no means a fool) could never have put to paper, in his sober 
senses, anything so absurd as the paragraph quoted above, with- 
out stopping at every third word to hold his sides, or thrust his 
pocket-handkerchief into his mouth. If the serious intention be 
insisted upon, however, I have to remark that the opinion is the 
mere opinion of a writer remarkable for no other good trait than 
his facility at putting his readers to sleep according to rules Addi- 
sonian, and with the least possible loss of labor and time. But 
as the mere opinion of even a Jeffrey or a Macaulay, I have an 
inalienable right to meet it with another. 

As a novelist, then, Bulwer is far more than respectable ; al- 
though generally inferior to Scott, Godwin, D'Israeli, Miss Bur- 
ney, Sue, Dumas, Dickens, the author of " Ellen Wareham," and 
the author of " Jane Eyre," and several others. From the list of 
foreign novels I could select a hundred which he could neither 
have written nor conceived. As a dramatist, he deserves more 
credit, although he receives less. His " Richelieu," " Money," and 
" Lady of Lyons," have done much in the way of opening the 
public eyes to the true value of what is superciliously termed 
"stage effect" in the hands of one able to manage it. But if 
commendable at this point, his dramas fail egregiously in points 
more important ; so that, upon the whole, he can be said to have 
written a good play, only when we think of him in connexion with 
the still more contemptible "old-dramatist" imitators who are his 
contemporaries and friends. As historian, he is sufficiently digni- 
fied, sufficiently ornate, and more than sufficiently self-sufficient. 
His "Athens" would have received an Etonian prize, and has all 
the happy air of an Etonian prize-essay re-vamped. His political 
pamphlets are very good as political pamphlets and very disrepu- 



504 MARGINALIA. 



table as anything else. His essays leave no doubt upon any 
body's mind that, with the writer, they have been essays indeed. 
His criticism is really beneath contempt. His moral philosophy 
is the most ridiculous of all the moral philosophies that ever have 
been imagined upon earth. 

" The men of sense," says Helvetius, " those idols of the un- 
thinking, are very far inferior to the men of passions. It is the 
strong passions which, rescuing us from sloth, can alone impart to 
us that continuous and earnest attention necessary to great intel- 
lectual efforts." 

When the Swiss philosopher here speaks of " inferiority," he 
refers to inferiority in worldly success: — by "men of sense" he 
intends indolent men of genius. And Bulwer is, emphatically, 
one of the "men of passions" contemplated in the apothegm. 
His passions, with opportunities, have made him what he is. 
Urged by a rabid ambition to do much, in doing nothing he would 
merely have proved himself an idiot. Something he has done. 
In aiming at Crichton, he has hit the target an inch or two above 
Harrison Ainsworth. Not to such intellects belong the honors of 
universality. His works bear about them the unmistakeable in- 
dications of mere talent — talent, I grant, of an unusual order, and 
nurtured to its extreme of development with a very tender and 
elaborate care. Nevertheless, it is talent still. Genius it is not. 

And the proof is, that while we often fancy ourselves about to 
be enkindled beneath its influence, fairly enkindled we never are. 
That Bulwer is no poet, follows as a corollary from what has been 
already said : — for to speak of a poet without genius, is merely 
to put forth a flat contradiction in terms. 

XXXV. 

In the tale proper — where there is no space for development 
of character or for great profusion and variety of incident — mere 
construction is, of course, far more imperatively demanded than 
in the novel. Defective plot, in this latter, may escape observa- 
tion, but in the tale, never. Most of our tale- writers, however, 
neglect the distinction. They seem to begin their stories without 
knowing how they are to end ; and their ends, generally, — like 
so many governments of Trinculo —appear to have forgotten their 
beginnings. 



MARGINALIA. 505 



XXXVI. 

Quaintness, within reasonable limits, is not only not to be 
regarded as affectation, but has its proper uses, in aiding a fan- 
tastic effect. Miss Barrett will afford me two examples. In some 
lines to a Dog, she says : 

Leap ! thy broad tail waves a light. 
Leap, thy slender feet are bright, 

Canopied in fringes. 
Leap ! those tasselied ears of thine 
Flicker strangely fair and fine 

Down their golden inches. 

And again — in the " Song of a Tree-Spirit." 

The Divine impulsion cleaves 
In dim movements to the leaves 
Dropt and lifted — dropt and lifted — 
In the sun-light greenly sifted — 
In the sun-light and the moon-light 
Greenly sifted through the trees. 
Ever wave the Eden trees 
In the night-light and the moon-light y 
With a ruffling of green branches 
Shaded off to resonances 
Never stirred by rain or breeze. 

The thoughts here belong to a high order of poetry, but could 
not have been wrought into effective expression, without the aid 
of those repetitions — those unusual phrases — those quaintnesses, 
in a word, which it has been too long the fashion to censure, in- 
discriminately, under the one general head of " affectation." No 
poet will fail to be pleased with the two extracts I have here 
given ; but no doubt there are some who will find it hard to 
reconcile the psychal impossibility of refraining from admiration, 
with the too-hastily attained mental conviction that, critically, 
there is nothing to admire. 

XXXVII. 

Mozart declared, on his death-bed, that he " began to see what 
may be done in music ;" and it is to be hoped that De Meyer and 
the rest of the spasmodists will, eventually, begin to understand 
whai may not be done in this particular branch of the Fine Arts. 

XXXVIII. 

For my part I agree with Joshua Barnes : nobody but Solomon 
could have written the Iliad. The catalogue of ships was the 
work of Robins. 

Vol. III.— 22 



506 MARGINALIA. 



XXXIX. 

In Col ton's "American Review" for October, 1845, a gen- 
tleman, well known for his scholarship, has a forcible paper on 
" The Scotch School of Philosophy and Criticism." But although 
the paper is " forcible," it presents the most singular admixture of 
error and truth — the one dovetailed into the other, after a fashion 
which is novel to say the least of it. Were I to designate in a 
few words what the whole article demonstrated, I should say 
" the folly of not beginning at the beginning — of neglecting the 
giant Moulineau's advice to his friend Ram." Here is a passage 
from the essay in question : 

The Doctors [Campbell and Johnson] both charge Pope with error and 
inconsistenc} r : — error in supposing that in English, of metrical lines unequal 
in the number of syllables and pronounced in equal times, the longer suggests 
celerity (this being the principle of the Alexandrine :) — inconsistency, in that 
Pope himself uses the same contrivance to convey the contrary idea of 
slowness. But why in English ? It is not and cannot be disputed that, in 
the hexameter verse of the Greeks and Latins — which is the model in this 
matter — what is distinguished as the " dactylic line " was uniformly applied 
to express velocity. How was it to do so ? Simply from the fact of being 
pronounced in an equal time with, while containing a greater number of 
syllables or " bars " thau the ordinary or average measure ; as, on the 
other hand, the spondaic line, composed of the minimum number, was, upon 
the same principle, used to indicate slowness. So, too, of the Alexandrine 
in English versification. No, says Campbell, there is a difference : the 
Alexandrine in not in fact, like the dactylic line, pronounced in the common 
time. But does this alter the principle ? What is the rationale of Metre, 
whether the classical hexameter or the English heroic ?" 

I have written an essay on the "Rationale of Verse," in which 
the whole topic is surveyed abinitio, and with reference to general 
and immutable principles. To this essay I refer Mr. Bristed. In 
the meantime, without troubling myself to ascertain whether 
Doctors Johnson and Campbell are wrong, or whether Pope is 
wrong, or whether the reviewer is right or wrong, at this point or 
at that, let me succinctly state what is the truth on the topics at 
issue. And first ; the same principles, in all cases, govern all 
verse. What is true in English is true in Greek. Secondly ; in 
a series of lines, if one line contains more syllables than the law 
of the verse demands, and if, nevertheless, this line is pronounced 
in the same time, upon the whole, as the rest of the lines, then 
this line suggests celerity — on account of the increased rapidity 
of enunciation required. Thus in the Greek hexameter the dac- 



MARGINALIA. 607 



tylic lines — those most abounding in dactyls — serve best to con- 
vey the idea of rapid motion. The spondaic lines convey that 
of slowness. Thirdly ; it is a gross mistake to suppose that the 
Greek dactylic line is " the model in this matter " — the matter of 
the English Alexandrine. The Greek dactylic line is of the 
same number of feet — bars — beats — pulsations — as the ordinary 
dactylic-spondaic lines among which it occurs. But the Alexan- 
drine is longer by one foot — by one pulsation — than the pentam- 
eters among which it arises. For its pronunciation it demands 
more time, and therefore, ceteris paribus, it would well serve to 
convey the impression of length, or duration, and thus, indirectly, 
of slowness. I say ceteris paribus. But, by varying conditions, 
we can effect a total change in the impression conveyed. When 
the idea of slowness is conveyed by the Alexandrine, it is not 
conveyed by any slower enunciation of syllables — that is to say, 
it is not directly conveyed — but indirectly, through the idea of 
length in the whole line. Now, if we wish to convey, by means 
of an Alexandrine, the impression of velocity, we readily do so 
by giving rapidity to our enunciation of the syllables composing 
the several feet. To effect this, however, we must have more 
syllables, or we shall get through the whole line too quickly for 
the intended time. To get more syllables, all we have to do, is 
to use, in place of iambuses, what our prosodies call anapaests.* 
Thus in the line, 

Flies o'er the unbending corn and skims along the main, 
the syllables " the unbend " form an anapaest and, demanding 
unusual rapidity of enunciation, in order that we may get them 
in the ordinary time of an iambus, serve to suggest celerity. By 
the elision of e in the, as is customary, the whole of the intended 
effect is lost ; for th 'unbend is nothing more than the usual 
iambus. In a word, whenever an Alexandrine expresses celerity, 

* I use the prosodial word " anapaest," merely because here I have no 
space to show what the reviewer will. admit I have distinctly shown in the 
essay referred to — viz : that the additional syllable introduced, does not 
make the foot an anapaest, or the equivalent of an anapaest, and that, if it 
did, it would spoil the line. On this topic, and on all topics connected with 
verse, there is not a prosody in existence which is not a mere jumble of the 
grossest error. 



508 MARGINALIA. 



we shall find it to contain one or more anapaest — the more 
anapaests, the more decided the impression. But the tendency 
of the Alexandrine consisting merely of the usual iambuses, is 
to convey slowness — although it conveys this idea feebly, on 
account of conveying it indirectly. It follows, from what I have 
said, that the common pentameter, interspersed with anapaests, 
would better convey celerity than the Alexandrine interspersed 
with them in a similar degree ; — and it unquestionably does. 

XL. 

This "species of nothingness" is quite as reasonable, at all 
events, as any " kind of something-ness." See Cowley's " Crea- 
tion," where, 

An unshaped kind of something first appeared. 
XLI. 

If any ambitious man have a fancy to revolutionize, at one 
effort, the universal world of human thought, human opinion, and 
human sentiment, the opportunity is his own — the road to im- 
mortal renown lies straight, open, and unencumbered before him. 
All that he has to do is to write and publish a very little book. 
Its title should be simple — a few plain words — " My Heart Laid 
Bare." But — this little book must be true to its title. 

Now, is it not very singular that, with the rabid thirst for 
notoriety which distinguishes so many of mankind — so many, 
too, who care not a fig what is thought of them after death, there 
should not be found one man having sufficient hardihood to write 
this little book ? To write, I say. There are ten thousand men 
who, if the book were once written, would laugh at the notion 
of being disturbed by its publication during their life, and who 
could not even conceive why they should object to its being pub- 
lished after their death. But to write it — there is the rub. No 
man dare write it. No man ever will dare write it. No man 
could write it, even if he dared. The paper would shrivel and 
blaze at every touch of the fiery pen. 

XLII. 
All that the man of genius demands for his exaltation is 
moral matter in motion. It makes no difference whither tends the 
motion — whether for him or against him — and it is absolutely 
of no consequence " what is the matter." 



MARGINALIA. 509 



XLIII. 

To converse well, we need the cool tact of talent — to talk 
well, the glowing abandon of genius. Men of very high ge- 
nius, however, talk at one time very well, at another very ill : 
— well, when they have full time, full scope, and a sympathetic 
listener : — ill, when they fear interruption and are annoyed by 
the impossibility of exhausting the topic during that particular 
talk. The partial genius is flashy — scrappy. The true genius 
shudders at incompleteness — imperfection — and usually prefers 
silence to saying the something which is not everything that 
should be said. He is so filled with his theme that he is dumb, 
first from not knowing how to begin, where there seems eternally 
beginning behind beginning, and secondly from perceiving his 
true end at so infinite a distance. Sometimes, dashing into a 
subject, he blunders, hesitates, stops short, sticks fast, and 
because he has been overwhelmed by the rush and multiplicity 
of his thoughts, his hearers sneer at his inability to think. Such 
a man finds his proper element in those " great occasions " which 
confound and prostrate the general intellect. 

Nevertheless, by his conversation, the influence of the conver- 
sationist upon mankind in general, is more decided than that of 
the talker by his talk : — the latter invariably talks to best purpose 
with his pen. And good conversationists are more rare than 
respectable talkers. I know many of the latter ; and of the former 
only five or six : — among whom I can call to mind, just now, Mr. 
Willis, Mr J. T. S. Sullivan, of Philadelphia, Mr. W. M. R, of 

Petersbug, Va., and Mrs. S d, formerly of New York. Most 

people, in conversing, force us to curse our stars that our lot was ■ 
not cast among the African nation mentioned by Eudoxus — the 
savages who having no mouths, never opened them, as a matter 
of course. And yet, if denied mouth, some persons whom I 
have in my eye would contrive to chatter on still — as they do 
now — through the nose. 

XLIV. 

I cannot tell how it happens, but, unless, now and then, in a 
case of portrait-painting, very few of our artists can justly be 
held guilty of the crime imputed by Apelles to Protogenes — that 
of " being too natural." 



510 MARGINALIA. 



XLV. 

It was a pile of the oyster, which yielded the precious pearls of the 
South, and the artist had judiciously painted some with their lips parted, 
and showing within the large precious fruit in the attainment of which 
Spanish cupidity had already proved itself capable of every peril, as well 
as every crime. At once true and poetical, no comment could have been 
more severe, &c. — Mr. Simms' Damsel of Darien. 

Body of Bacchus ! — only think of poetical beauty in the counte- 
nance of a gaping oyster ! 

And how natural, in an age so fanciful, to believe that the stars and 
starry groups beheld in the new world for the first time by the native of the 
old were especially assigned for its government and protection. 

Now, if by the old world be meant the east, and by the new- 
world the west, I am at a loss to know what are the stars seen 
in the one which cannot be equally seen in the other. Mr. Simms 
has abundant faults — or had ; — among which inaccurate English, 
a proneness to revolting images, and pet phrases, are the most 
noticeable. Nevertheless, leaving out of the question Brockden 
Brown and Hawthorne, (who are each a genus,) he is immeasur- 
ably the best writer of fiction in America. He has more vigor, 
more imagination, more movement, and more general capacity 
than all our novelists (save Cooper) combined. 

XLVI. 

All a in hot and copper sky 

The bloody sun at noon 
Just up above the mast did stand, 

No bigger than the moon. — Coleridge. 

Is it possible that the poet did not know the apparent di- 
ameter of the moon to be greater than that of the sun ? 

XLVII. 

Here is an edition,* which, so far as microscopical excellence 
and absolute accuracy of typography are concerned, might well be 
prefaced with the phrase of the Koran — " There is no error in 
this book." We cannot call a single inverted o an error — can 
we ? But I am really as glad of having found that inverted o, 
as ever was a Columbus or an Archimedes. What, after all, are 
continents discovered, or silversmiths exposed ? Give us a good 
o turned upside-down, and a whole herd of bibliomanic Arguses 
overlooking it for years. 

* Camoens— Genoa — 1*798. 



MARGINALIA. 611 



XLVIII. 
That sweet smile and serene — that smile never seen but upon the face 
of the dying and the dead. — Earnest Maltravers. 

Bulvver is not the man to look a stern fact in the face. He 
would rather sentamentalize upon a vulgar although picturesque 
error. Who ever really saw anything but horror in the smile of 
the dead ? We so earnestly desire to fancy it " sweet " — that is 
the source of the mistake ; if, indeed, there ever was a mistake in 

the question. 

XLIX. 
The misapplication of quotations is clever, and has a capital 
effect, when well done ; but Lord Brougham has not exactly that 
kind of capacity which the thing requires. One of the best hits 
in this way is made by Tieck, and I have lately seen it appropria- 
ted, with interesting complacency, in an English magazine. The 
author of the " Journey into the Blue Distance," is giving an 
account of some young ladies, not very beautiful, whom he caught 
in mediis rebus, at their toilet. " They were curling their mon- 
strous heads," says he, "as Shakspeare says of the waves in a 

storm." 

L. 
Here are both Dickens and Bulwer perpetually using the 
adverb " directly " in the sense of " as soon as." " Directly he 
came I did so and so." — " Directly I knew it I said this and 
that." But observe ! — " Grammar is hardly taught," [in the 
United States,] " being thought an unnecessary basis for other 
learning." I quote " America and her Resources" by the British 
Counsellor at Law, John Bristed. 

LI. 

At Ermenonville, too, there is a striking instance of the Gallic 

rhythm with which a Frenchman regards the English verse. 

There Gerardin has the following inscription to the memory of 

Shenstone : 

This plain stone ^ 

To William Shenstone. 

In his writings he displayed 

A mind natural ; 
At Leasowes he laid 
Arcadian greens rural. 

There are few Parisians, speaking English, who would find any- 
thing particularly the matter with this epitaph. 



512 MARGINALIA. 



LIL 

Upon her was lavished the enthusiastic applause of the most 
correct taste, and of the deepest sensibility. Human triumph, 
in all that is most exciting and delicious, never went beyond that 
which she experienced — or never but in the case of Taglioni. 
For what are the extorted adulations that fall to the lot of the 
conqueror ? — what even are the extensive honors of the popular 
author — his far-reaching fame — his high influence — or the most 
devout public appreciation of his works — to that rapturous appro- 
bation of the personal woman — that spontaneous, instant, present, 
and palpable applause — those irrepressible acclamations — those 
eloquent sighs and tears which the idolized Malibran at once 
heard, and saw, and deeply felt that she deserved? Her brief 
career was one gorgeous dream — for even the many sad intervals 
of her grief were but dust in the balance of her glory. In this 
book* I read much about the causes which curtailed her existence; 
and there seems to hang around them, as here given, an indis- 
tinctness which the fair memorialist tries in vain to illumine. She 
seems never to approach the full truth. She seems never to 
reflect that the speedy decease was but a condition of the 
rapturous life. No thinking person, hearing Malibran sing, could 
have doubted that she would die in the spring of her days. She 
crowded ages into hours. She left the world at twenty-five, 
having existed her thousands of years. 

LIU 

Accursed be the heart that does not wildly throb, and palsied be the eye 
that will not weep over the woes of the wanderer of Switzerland." — 
Monthly Register, 1807. 

This is " dealing damnation round the land '' to some purpose ; 

— upon the reader, and not upon the author, as usual. For my 

part I shall be one of the damned ; for I have in vain endeavored 

to see even a shadow of merit in anything ever written by either 

of the Montgomeries. 

LIV. 

Strange — that I should heref find the only non-execrable bar- 
barian attempts at imitation of the Greek and Roman measures ! 

* " Memoirs and Letters of Madame Malibran," by the Countess of Merlin, 
f Forelaesninger over det Danske Sprog, eller resonneret Dansk Gram- 
matik, ved Jacob Buden. 



MARGINALIA. 613 



LV. 

In my reply to the letter signed "Outis," and defending Mr. 
Longfellow from certain charges supposed to have been made 
against him by myself, I took occasion to assert that " of the class 
of wilful plagiarists nine out of ten are authors of established repu- 
tation who plunder recondite, neglected, or forgotten books." I 
came to this conclusion a priori ; but experience has confirmed 
me in it. Here is a plagiarism from Channing ; and as it is per- 
petrated by an anonymous writer in a monthly magazine, the 
theft seems at war with my assertion — until it is seen that the 
magazine in question is Campbell's " New Monthly " for August, 
1828. Channing, at that time, was comparatively unknown; 
and, besides, the plagiarism appeared in a foreign country, where 
there was little probability of detection. Channing, in his essay 
on Buonaparte, says : 

"We would observe that military talent, even of the highest order, is far 
from holding the first place among intellectual endowments. It is one of the 
lower forms of genius, for it is not conversant with the highest and richest 
objects of thought Still the chief work of a general is to apply physi- 
cal force — to remove physical obstructions — to avail himself of physical aids 
and advantages — to act on matter — to overcome rivers, ramparts, mountains, 
and human muscles; and these are not the highest objects of mind, nor do 
they demand intelligence of the highest order : — and accordingly nothing is 
more common than to find men, eminent in this department, who are almost 
wholly wanting in the noblest energies of the soul — in imagination and 
taste — in the capacity of enjoying works of genius — in large views of human 
nature — in the moral sciences — in the application of analysis and generaliza- 
tion to the human mind and to society, and in original conceptions on the 
great subjects which have absorbed the most glorious understandings. 

The thief in " The New Monthly," says : 

Military talent, even of the highest grade, is very far from holding the first 
place among intellectual endowments. It is one of the lower forms of genius, 
for it is never made conversant with the more delicate and abstruse of mental 
operations. It is used to apply physical force ; to remove physical force ; to 
remove physical obstructions ; to avail itself of physical aids and advantages ; 
and all these are not the highest objects of mind, nor do they demand intelli- 
gence of the highest and rarest order. Nothing is more common than to find 
men eminent in the science and practice of war, wholly wanting in the nobler 
energies of the soul ; in imagination, in taste, in enlarged views of human na- 
ture, in the moral sciences, in the application of analysis and generalization 
to the human mind and to society ; or in original conceptions on the great 
subjects which have occupied and absorbed the most glorious of human un- 
derstandings. 

The article in " The New Monthly" is on " The State of Par- 
ties." The italics are mine. 

22* 



514 MARGINALIA. 



Apparent plagiarisms frequently arise from an author's self- 
repetition. He finds that something he has already published 
has fallen dead — been overlooked — or that it is peculiarly apropos 
to another subject now under discussion. He therefore intro- 
duces the passage ; often without allusion to his having printed 
it before ; and sometimes he introduces it into an anonymous arti- 
cle. An anonymous writer is thus, now and then, unjustly ac- 
cused of plagiarism — when the sin is merely that of self-repetition. 
In the present case, however, there has been a deliberate plagiar- 
ism of the silliest as well as meanest species. Trusting to the 
obscurity of his original, the plagiarist has fallen upon the idea 
of killing two birds with one stone — of dispensing with all dis- 
guise but that of decoration. Channing says " order " — the writer 
in the New Monthly says " grade." The former says that this 
order is " far from holding," etc. — the latter says it is " very far 
from holding." The one says that military talent is " not con- 
versant," and so on — the other says " it is never made conversant." 
The one speaks of " the highest and richest objects " — the other 
of "the more delicate and abstruse." Channing speaks of 
" thought" — the thief of "mental operations." Channing men- 
tions "intelligence of the highest order" — the thief will have it 
of " the highest and rarest" Channing observes that military 
talent is often " almost wholly wanting," etc. — the thief maintains 
it to be " wholly wanting." Channing alludes to " large views 
of human nature " — the thief can be content with nothing less 
than " enlarged " ones. Finally, the American having been satis- 
fied with a reference to " subjects which have absorbed the most 
glorious understandings," the Cockney puts him to shame at once 
by discoursing about " subjects which have occupied and absorb- 
ed the most glorious of human understandings " — as if one could 
be absorbed, without being occupied, by a subject — as if "o/" 
were here any thing more than two superfluous letters — and as 
if there were any chance of the reader's supposing that the under- 
standings in question were the understandings of frogs, or jack- 
asses, or Johnny Bulls. 

By the way, in a case of this kind, whenever there is a question 
as to who is the original and who the plagiarist, the point may 
be determined, almost invariably, by observing which passage is 



MARGINALIA. 515 



amplified, or exaggerated, in tone. To disguise his stolen horse, 
the uneducated thief cuts off the tail ; but the educated thief pre- 
fers tying on a new tail at the end of the old one, and painting 

them both sky blue. 

J LVI. 

When I consider the true talent — the real force of Mr. Emer- 
son, I am lost in amazement at finding in him little more 
than a respectful imitation of Carlyle. Is it possible that 
Mr. E. has ever seen a copy of Seneca ? Scarcely — or he would 
long ago have abandoned his model in utter confusion at the pa- 
rallel between his own worship of the author of " Sartor Resar- 
tus" and the aping of Sallust by Aruntius, as described in the 
1 14th Epistle. In the writer of the " History of the Punic Wars" 
Emerson is portrayed to the life. The parallel is close ; for not 
only is the imitation of the same character, but the things imi- 
tated are identical. Undoubtedly it is to be said of Sallust, far 
more plausibly than of Carlyle, that his obscurity, his unusuality 
of expression, and his Laconism (which had the effect of diffuse- 
ness, since the time gained in the mere perusal of his pithinesses 
is trebly lost in the necessity of cogitating them out) — it may be 
said of Sallust, more truly than of Carlyle, that these qualities 
bore the impress of his genius, and were but a portion of his un- 
affected thought. If there is any difference between Aruntius 
and Emerson, this difference is clearly in favor of the former, who 
was in some measure excusable, on the ground that he was as 
great a fool as the latter is not. 

LVII. 

I believe that odors have an altogether peculiar force, in af- 
fecting us through association ; a force differing essentially from 
that of objects addressing the touch, the taste, the sight, or the 

hearing. 

LVIII. 

It would have been becoming, I think, in Bulwer, to have 
made at least a running acknowledgment of that extensive in- 
debtedness to Arnay's " Private Life of the Romans,"* which he 
had so little scruple about incurring, during the composition of 
" The Last days of Pompeii." He acknowledges, I believe, what 
he owes to Sir William Gell's " Pompeiana." Why this ? — why 

not that ? 

* 1764. 



516 MARGINALIA. 



LIX. 
One of our truest poets is Thomas Buchanan Read. His 
most distinctive features are, first, "tenderness," or subdued 
passion, and secondly, fancy. His sin is imitativeness. At present, 
although evincing high capacity, he is but a copyist of Longfel- 
low — that is to say, but the echo of an echo. Here is a beautiful 
thought which is not the property of Mr. Read : 

And, where the spring-time sun had longer shone, 
A violet looked up and found itself alone. 

Here again : a spirit 

Slowly through the lake descended, 

Till from her hidden form below 

The waters took a golden glow, 

As if the star which made her forehead bright 

Had burst and filled the lake with light. 

Lowell has some lines very similar, ending with 

As if a star had burst within his brain. 

LX. 

I cannot say that I ever fairly comprehended the force 
of the term " insult," until I was given to understand, one day, 
by a member of the "North American Review'''' clique, that this 
journal was " not only willing but anxious to render me that jus- 
tice which had been already rendered me by the ' Revue Fran- 
faise' and the ' Revue des Deux Mondes' " — but was " restrained 
from so doing" by my "invincible spirit of antagonism." I wish 
the " North American Review" to express no opinion of me what- 
ever — for I have none of it. In the meantime, as I see no motto 
on its title-page, let me recommend it one from Sterne's " Letter 
from France." Here it is : — "As we rode along the valley we 
saw a herd of asses on the top of one of the mountains — how 
they viewed and reviewed us !" 

LXI. 

Von Raumer says that Enslen, a German optician, con- 
ceived the idea of throwing a shadowy figure, by optical means, 
into the chair of Banquo ; and that the thing was readily done. 
Intense effect was produced ; and I do not doubt that an Ameri- 
can audience might be electrified by the feat. But our managers 
not only have no invention of their own, but no energy to avail 
themselves of that of others. 



MARGINALIA. 517 



LXIL 

A capital book, generally speaking ;* but Mr. Grattan 
has a bad habit — that of loitering in the road — of dallying and 
toying with his subjects, as a kitten with a mouse — instead of 
grasping it firmly at once and eating it up without more ado. He 
takes up too much time in the ante-room. He has never done 
with his introductions. Occasionally, one introduction is but the 
vestibule to another ; so that by the time he arrives at his main 
incidents, there is nothing more to tell. He seems afflicted with 
that curious yet common perversity observed in garrulous old 
women — the desire of tantalizing by circumlocution. Mr. G.'s 
circumlocution, however, is by no means like that which Albany 
Fonblanque describes as " a style of about and about and all the 
way round to nothing and nonsense." ... If the greasy-looking 
lithograph here given as a frontispiece, be meant for Mr. Grattan, 
then is Mr. Grattan like nobody else : — for the fact is, I never yet 
knew an individual with a wire wig, or the countenance of an un- 
der-done apple dumpling. . . .As a general rule, no man should 
put his own face in his own book. In looking at the author's 
countenance the reader is seldom in condition to keep his own. 

LXIII. 

Here # is a good idea for a Magazine paper: — let some- 
body " work it up :" — A flippant pretender to universal acquire- 
ment — a would-be Crichton — engrosses, for an hour or two, 
perhaps, the attention of a large company — most of whom are 
profoundly impressed by his knowledge. He is very witty, in es- 
pecial, at the expense of a modest young gentleman, who ven- 
tures to make no reply, and who, finally, leaves the room as if 
overwhelmed with confusion ; — the Crichton greeting his exit with 
a laugh. Presently he returns, followed by a footman carrying an 
armful of books. These are deposited on the table. The young 
gentleman, now, referring to some penciled notes which he had 
been secretly taking during the Crichton's display of erudition, 
pins the latter to his statements, each by each, and refutes them 
all in turn, Dereference to the very authorities cited by the ego- 
tist himself — whose ignorance at all points is thus made apparent. 



* "High-ways and By-ways." 



518 MARGINALIA. 



LXIV. 

A long time ago — twenty-three or four years at least — Ed- 
ward C. Pinckney, of Baltimore, published an exquisite poem 
entitled "A Health." It was profoundly admired by the criti- 
cal few, but had little circulation : — this for no better reason 
than that the author was born too far South. I quote a few 
lines : 

Affections are as thoughts to her, 

The measures of her hours — 
Her feelings have the fragrancy, 

The freshness of young flowers. 
To her the better elements 

And kindlier stars have given 
A form so fair, that, like the air, 
'Tis less of Earth than Heaven. 

Now, in 1842, Mr. George Hill published "The Ruins of 
Athens and Other Poems," — and from one of the " Other Poems " 
I quote what follows : 

And thoughts go sporting through her .mind 

Like children among flowers ; 
And deeds of gentle goodness are 

The measures of her hours. 
In soul or face she bears no trace 

Of one from Eden driven, 
But like the rainbow seems, though born 

Of Earth, a part of Heaven. 

Is this plagiarism or is it not ? — I merely ask for information. 
LXV. 

Had the "George Balcombe" of Professor Beverley Tucker 
been the work of any one born North of Mason and Dixon's 
line, it would have been long ago recognised as one of the 
very noblest fictions ever written by an American. It is almost 
as good as "Caleb Williams." The manner in which the cabal 
of the " North American Review " first write all our books and 
then review them, puts me in mind of the fable about the Lion 
and the Painter. It is high time that the literary South took its 
own interests into its own charge. 

LXVI. 

Here is a plot which, with all its complexity, has no adaptation 
— no dependency ; — it is involute and nothing moTe — having all 

the air of G 's wig, or the cycles and epicycles in Ptolemy's 

" Almagest." 



MARGINALIA. 519 



LXVII. 
We might give two plausible derivations of the epithet 
"weeping" as applied to the willow. We might say that the 
word has its origin in the pendulous character of the long branches, 
which suggest the idea of water dripping ; or we might assert 
that the term comes from a fact in the natural history of the 
tree. It has a vast insensible perspiration, which, upon sudden 
cold, condenses, and sometimes is precipitated in a shower. Now, 
one might very accurately determine the bias and value of a man's 
powers of causality, by observing which of these two derivations 
he would adopt. The former is, beyond question, the true ; and, 
for this reason — that common or vulgar epithets are universally 
suggested by common or immediately obvious things, without 
strict regard of any exactitude in application : — but the latter 
would be greedily seized by nine philologists out of ten, for no 
better cause than its epigrammatism — than the pointedness with 
which the singular fact seems to touch the occasion. Here, then, 
is a subtle source of error which Lord Bacon has neglected. It 
is an Idol of the Wit. 

LXVIII. 
In a " Hymn for Christmas,'' by Mrs. Hemans, we find the 
following stanza : 

Oh, lovely voices of the sky 

Which hymned the Savior's birth, 
Are ye not singing still on high, 

Ye that sang " Peace on Earth ?" 
To us yet speak the strains 

"Where wi th, in times gone by, 
Ye blessed the Syrian swains, 
Oh, voices of the sky ! 

And at page 305 of " The Christian Keepsake and Missionary 
Annual for 1840" — a Philadelphia Annual — we find "A Christ- 
mas Carol," by Richard W. Dodson : — the first stanza running 

thus : 

Angel voices of the sky ! 

Ye that hymned Messiah's birth, 
Sweetly singing from on high 

" Peace, Goodwill to all on earth !" 
Oh, to us impart those strains ! 

Bid our doubts and fears to cease ! 
Ye that cheered the Syrian swains, 
Cheer us with that song of peace ! 



520 MARGINALIA. 



LXIX. 

The more there are great excellences in a work, the less am I surprised at 
finding great demerits. When a. book is said to have many faults, nothing 
is decided, and I cannot tell, by this, whether it is excellent or execrable. It 
is said of another that it is without fault ; if the account be just, the work 
cannot be excellent. — Trublet. 

The " cannot " here is much too positive. The opinions of 
Trublet are wonderfully prevalent, but they are none the less de- 
monstrably false. It is merely the indolence of genius which has 
given them currency. The truth seems to be that genius of the 
highest order lives in a state of perpetual vacillation between am- 
bition and the scorn of it. The ambition of a great intellect is 
at best negative. It struggles — it labors — it creates — not because 
excellence is desirable, but because to be excelled where there ex- 
ists a sense of the power to excel, is unendurable. Indeed I can- 
not help thinking that the greatest intellects (since these most 
clearly perceive the laughable absurdity of human ambition) re- 
main contentedly " mute and inglorious." At all events, the 
vacillation 01 which I speak is the prominent feature of genius. 
Alternately inspired and depressed, its inequalities of mood are 
stamped upon its labors. This is the truth, generally — but it is 
a truth very different from the assertion involved in the " cannot " 
of Trublet. Give to genius a sufficiently enduring motive, and 
the result will be harmony, proportion, beauty, perfection — all, 
in this case, synonymous terms. Its supposed " inevitable " irre- 
gularities shall not be found : — for it is clear that the susceptibility 
to impressions of beauty — that susceptibility which is the most 
important element of genius — implies an equally exquisite sensi- 
tiveness and aversion to deformity. The motive — the enduring 
motive — has indeed, hitherto, fallen rarely to the lot of genius ; 
but I could point to several compositions which, " without any 
fault," are yet "excellent" — supremely so. The world, too, is on 
the threshold of an epoch, wherein, with the aid of a calm philos- 
ophy, such compositions shall be ordinarily the work of that 
genius which is true. One of the first and most essential steps, 
in overpassing this threshold, will serve to kick out of the world's 
way this very idea of Trublet — this untenable and paradoxical 
idea of the incompatibility of genius with art. 



MARGINALIA. 521 



LXX. 
It may well be doubted whether a single paragraph of 
merit can be found either in the "Koran" of Lawrence Sterne, 
or in the " Lacon " of Colton, of which paragraph the origin, or 
at least the germ, may not be traced to Seneca, to Plutarch, 
(through Machiavelli) to Machiavelli himself, to Bacon, to Bur- 
don, to Burton, to Bolinbroke, to Rochefoucault, to Balzac, the 
author of " La Maniere de Bien Penser" or to Bielfeld, the Ger- 
man, who wrote, in French, "Les Premiers Traits de L* Erudition 
Universelle." 

LXXL 

A man of genius, if not permitted to choose his own sub- 
ject, will do worse, in letters, than if he had talents none at 
all. And here how imperatively is he controlled ! To be sure, 
he can write to suit himself — but in the same manner his pub- 
lishers print. From the nature of our copyright laws, he has 
no individual powers. As for his free agency, it is about equal 
to that of the dean and chapter of the see-cathedral, in a British 
election of Bishops— an election held by virtue of the king's writ 
of conge d'elire — specifying the person to be elected. 

LXXII. 

To see distinctly the machinery — the wheels and pinions 
— of any work of Art is, unquestionably, of itself, a pleasure, 
but one which we are able to enjoy only just in proportion 
as we do not enjoy the legitimate effect designed by the artist : — 
and, in fact, it too often happens that to reflect analytically upon 
Art, is to reflect after the fashion of the mirrors in the temple of 
Smyrna, which represent the fairest images as deformed. 

LXXIII. 

With the aid of a lantern, I have been looking again at 

"Niagara and other Poems" (Lord only knows if that be the 

true title) — but " there's nothing in it :" — at least nothing of Mr. 

Lord's own — nothing which is not stolen — or, (more delicately,) 

transfused — transmitted. By the way, Newton says a great deal 

about " fits of easy transmission and reflection,"* and I have no 

doubt that " Niagara" was put together in one of these identical 

fits. 

* Of the solar rays — in the " Optics." 



522 MARGINALIA. 



LXXIV. 

A remarkable work,'* and one which I find much difficulty 
in admitting to be the composition of a woman. Not that 
many good and glorious things have not been the composition of 
women — but, because, here, the severe precision of style,- the 
thoroughness, and the luminousness, are points never observable, 
in even the most admirable of their writings. Who is Lady 
Georgiana Fullerton ? Who is that Countess of Dacre, who 
edited " Ellen Wareham," — the most passionate of fictions — ap- 
proached, only in some particulars of passion, by this ? The 
great defect of u Ellen Middleton," lies in the disgusting stern- 
ness, captiousness, and bullet-headedness of her husband. We 
cannot sympathize with her love for him. And the intense self- 
ishness of the rejected lover precludes that compassion which is 
designed. Alice is a creation of true genius. The imagination, 
throughout, is of a lofty order, and the snatches of original verse 
would do honor to any poet living. But the chief merit, after 
all, is that of the style — about which it is difficult to say too much 
in the way of praise, although it has, now and then, an odd Gal- 
licism — such as "she lost her head," meaning she grew crazy. 
There is much, in the whole manner of this book, which puts me 
in mind of " Caleb Williams." 

LXXV. 

The God-abstractions of the modern polytheism are nearly 
in as sad a state of perplexity and promiscuity as were the more 
substantial deities of the Greeks. Not a quality named that does 
not impinge upon some one other ; and Porphyry admits that 
Vesta, Rhea, Ceres, Themis, Proserpina, Bacchus, Attis, Adonis, 
Silenus, Priapus, and the Satyrs, were merely different terms for 
the same thing. Even gender was never precisely settled. Ser- 
vius on Virgil mentions a Venus with a beard. In Macrobius, too, 
Calvus talks of her as if she were a man ; while Valerius Sora- 
nus expressly calls Jupiter " the Mother of the Gods." 

LXXVI. 

The next work of Carlyle will be entitled " Bow- Wow," and 
the title-page will have a motto from the opening chapter of the 
Koran : " There is no error in this Book." 
* Ellen Middleton. 



MARGINALIA. 523 



LXXVII. 

Surely M cannot complain of the manner in which his 

book has been received ; for the public, in regard to it, has 
given him just such an assurance as Polyphemus pacified 
Ulysses with, while his companions were being eaten up before 

his eyes. " Your book, Mr. M ," says the public, " shall be — 

I pledge you my word — the very last that I devour." 
LXXVIII. 

The modern reformist Philosophy which annihilates the in- 
dividual by way of aiding the mass; and the late reformist 
Legislation, which prohibits pleasure with the view of advancing 
happiness, seem to be chips of that old block of a French feudal 
law which, to prevent young partridges from being disturbed, im- 
posed penalties upon hoeing and weeding. 

LXXIX. 
That Demosthenes " turned out very badly," appears, be- 
yond dispute, from a passage in " Meker de vet. et red. Pron. 
Ling. Grcecce, v where we read " Nee Mi (Demostheni) turpe vide- 
batur, optimis relictis magistris, ad canes se conferre, etc. etc? — 
that is to say, Demosthenes was not ashamed to quit good society 
and " go to the dogs.' 1 '' 

LXXX. 
When and pavoneggiarsi about the cele- 
brated personages whom they have " seen " in their travels, we 
shall not be far wrong in inferring that these celebrated person- 
ages were seen £x ai — as Pindar says he " saw " Archilochus, who 
died ages before the former was born. 

LXXXI. 
I cannot help thinking that romance-writers, in general, might, 
now and then, find their account in taking a hint from the Chi- 
nese, who, in spite of building their houses downwards, have 
still sense enough to begin their books at the end. 

LXXXII. 
La Harpe (who was no critic) has, nevertheless, done little 
more than strict justice to the fine taste and precise finish of Ra- 
cine, in all that regards the minor morals of Literature. In these 
he as far excels Pope, as Pope the veriest dolt in his own " Dun- 
ciad." 



524 MARGINALIA. 



LXXXIII. 

I have sometimes amused myself by endeavoring to fancy 
what would be the fate of an individual gifted, or rather ac- 
cursed, with an intellect very far superior to that of his race. 
Of course, he would be conscious of his superiority ; nor could he 
(if otherwise constituted as man is) help manifesting his conscious- 
ness. Thus he would make himself enemies at all points. And 
since his opinions and speculations would widely differ from those 
of all mankind — that he would be considered a madman, is evi- 
dent. How horribly painful such a condition ! Hell could 
invent no greater torture than that of being charged with ab- 
normal weakness on account of being abnormally strong. 

In like manner, nothing can be clearer than that a very gener- 
ous spirit — truly feeling what all merely profess — must inevitably 
find itself misconceived in every direction — its motives misinter- 
preted. Just as extremeness of intelligence would be thought 
fatuity, so excess of chivalry could not fail of being looked upon 
as meanness in its last degree : — and so on with other virtues. 
This subject is a painful one indeed. That individuals have so 
soared above the plane of their race, is scarcely to be questioned ; 
but, in looking back through history for traces of their existence, 
we should pass over all biographies of " the good and the great," 
while we search carefully the slight records of wretches who died 
in prison, in Bedlam, or upon the gallows. 
LXXXIV. 

Samuel Butler, of Hudibrastic memory, must have had a 
prophetic eye to the American Congress when he defined a 
rabble as — " A congregation or assembly of the States-General — 
every one being of a several judgment concerning whatever busi- 
ness be under consideration " . . . " They meet only to quarrel," 
he adds, " and then return home full of satisfaction and narrative." 

LXXXV. 

I have now before me a book in which the most noticeable 
thing is the pertinacity with which " Monarch " and " King " are 
printed with a capital M and a capital K. The author, it seems, 
has been lately presented at Court. He will employ a small g in 
future, I presume, whenever he is so unlucky as to have to speak 
of his God. 



MARGINALIA. 525 



LXXXVI. 

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term " Art," 
I should call it " the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in 
Nature through the veil of the soul." The mere imitation, how- 
ever accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred 
name of " Artist." Denner was no artist. The grapes of Zeuxis 
were inartistic — unless in a bird's-eye view ; and not even the 
curtain of Parrhasius could conceal his deficiency in point of 
genius. I have mentioned " the veil of the soul." Something 
of the kind appears indispensable in Art. We can, at any time, 
double the true beauty of an actual landscape by half closing our 
eyes as we look at it. The naked Senses sometimes see too little 
— but then always they see too much. 
LXXXVII. 

With how unaccountable an obstinacy even our best writers 
persist in talking about " moral courage " — as if there could 
be any courage that was not moral. The adjective is improp- 
erly applied to the subject instead of the object. The energy 
which overcomes fear — whether fear of evil threatening the per- 
son or threatening the impersonal circumstances amid which we 
exist — is, of course, simply a mental energy — is, of course, simply 
"moral." But, in speaking of "moral courage" we imply the 
existence of physical. Quite as reasonable an expression would 
be that of " bodily thought," or of " muscular imagination." 
LXXXVIIL 

I have great faith in fools : — self-confidence my friends will 

call it :— 

Si demain, oubliant d'eclore, 

Le jour manquait, eh bien ! demain 
Quelque fou trouverait encore 

Un flambeau pour le genre humain. 

By the way, what with the new electric light and other matters, 
De Beranger's idea is not so very extravagant. 
LXXXIX. 
" He that is born to be a man," says Wieland, in his 
"Peregrinus Proteus," "neither should nor can be anything 
nobler, greater, or better than a man." The fact is, that in efforts 
to soar above our nature, we invariably fall below it. Your re- 
formist demigods are merely devils turned inside out. 



526 MARGINALIA. 



XC. 
The phrase of which our poets, and more especially our 
orators, are so fond — the phrase " music of the spheres " — has 
arisen simply from a misconception of the Platonic word pavcm — 
which, with the Athenians, included not merely the harmonies of 
tune and time, but proportion generally. In recommending the 
study of " music " as " the best education for the soul," Plato re- 
ferred to the cultivation of the Taste, in contradistinction from 
that of the Pure Reason. By the "music of the spheres" is 
meant the agreements — the adaptations — in a word, the propor- 
tions — developed in the astronomical laws. He had no allusion 
to music in our understanding of the term. The word " mosaic," 
which we derive from fiowix^ refers, in like manner, to the pro- 
portion, or harmony of color, observed — or which should be ob- 
served — in the department of Art so entitled. 

XCL 

Not long ago, to call a man "a great wizard," was to in- 
voke for him fire and fagot ; but now, when we wish to run 
our protege for President, we just dub him " a little magician." 
The fact is, that, on account of the curious modern bouleversement 
of old opinion, one cannot be too cautious of the grounds on which 
he lauds a friend or vituperates a foe. 

XCII. 

"Philosophy," says Hegel, "is utterly useless and fruitless, 
and, for this very reason, is the sublimest of all pursuits, the 
most deserving attention, and the most worthy of our zeal." This 
jargon was suggested, no doubt, by Tertullian's " Movtuus est 
Dei filius ; credibile est quia ineptum — et sepultus resurrexit ; 
certum est quia impossibile." 

XCIIL 

A clever French writer of " Memoirs " is quite right in say- 
ing that "if the Universities had been willing to permit it, 
the disgusting old debauche of Teos, with his eternal Batyllis, 
would long ago have been buried in the darkness of oblivion." 

XCIV. 

It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future exist- 
ence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, 
as a dream. 



MARGINALIA. 52*7 



XCV. 
" The artist belongs to his work, not the work to the artist." — Novalis* 
In nine cases out of ten it is pure waste of time to attempt ex- 
torting sense from a German apothegm ; — or, rather, any sense 
and every sense may be extorted from all of them. If, in the 
sentence above quoted, the intention is to assert that the artist is 
the slave of his theme, and must conform it to his thoughts, I 
have no faith in the idea, which appears to me that of an essen- 
tially prosaic intellect. In the hands of the true artist the theme, 
or " work," is but a mass of clay, of which anything (within the 
compass of the mass and quality of the clay) may be fashioned 
at will, or according to the skill of the workman. The clay is, in 
fact, the slave of the artist. It belongs to him. His genius, to 
be sure, is manifested, very distinctively, in the choice of the clay. 
It should be neither fine nor coarse, abstractly — but just so fine 
or so coarse — just so plastic or so rigid — as may best serve the 
purposes of the thing to be wrought — of the idea to be made 
out, or, more exactly, of the impression to be conveyed. There 
are artists, however, who fancy only the finest material, and who, 
consequently, produce only the finest ware. It is generally very 
transparent and excessively brittle. 

XCVI. 
Tell a scoundrel, three or four times a day, that he is the 
pink of probity, and you make him at least the perfection of 
"respectability" in good earnest. On the other hand, accuse an 
honorable man, too pertinaciously, of being a villain, and you fill 
him with a perverse ambition to show you that you are not alto- 
gether in the wrong. 

XCVVIL 

The Romans worshipped their standards ; and the Roman 
standard happened to be an eagle. Our standard is only one- 
tenth of an Eagle — a Dollar — but we make all even by ador- 
ing it with tenfold devotion. 

XCVIII. 

A pumpkin has more angles than C , and is altogether 

a cleverer thing. He is remarkable at one point only — at that 
of being remarkable for nothing. 

* The non de plume of Von Hardenburgh. 



528 MARGINALIA. 



XCIX. 
That evil predominates over good, becomes evident, when we consider 
that there can be found no aged person who would be willing to relive 
the life he has already lived. — Volney. 

The idea here, is not distinctly made out ; for unless through 
the context, we cannot be sure whether the author means merely 
this : — that every aged person fancies he might, in a different 
course of life, have been happier than in the one actually lived, and, 
for this reason, would not be willing to live his life over again, 
but some other life ; — or, whether the sentiment intended is this : 
— that if, upon the grave's brink, the choice between the expected 
death and the re-living the old life, were offered any aged person, 
that person would would prefer to die. The first proposition is, 
perhaps, true ; but the last (which is the one designed) is not 
only doubtful, in point of mere fact, but is of no effect, even if 
granted to be true, in sustaining the original proposition — that 
evil predominates over good. It is assumed that the aged person 
will not re-live his life, because he knows that its evil predomina- 
ted over its good. The source of error lies in the word "knows" 
— in the assumption that w r e can ever be, really, in possession of 
the whole knowledge to which allusion is cloudily made. But 
there is a seeming — a fictitious knowledge ; and this very seeming- 
knowledge it is, of what the life has been, which incapacitates the 
aged person from deciding the question on its merits. He blindly 
deduces a notion of the happiness of the original real life — a no- 
tion of its preponderating evil or good — from a consideration of 
the secondary or supposititious one. In his estimate he merely 
strikes a balance between events, and leaves quite out of the ac- 
count that elastic Hope which is the Eos of all. Man's real life 
is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be 
so. In regarding the supposititious life, however, we paint to 
ourselves chill certainties for warm expectations, and grievances 
quadrupled in being foreseen. But because we cannot avoid 
doino; this — strain our imaginative faculties as we will — because it 
is so very difficult — so nearly impossible a task, to fancy the known 
unknown — the done unaccomplished — and because (through our 
inability to fancy all this) we prefer death to a secondary life — 



MARGINALIA. 529 



does it, in any manner, follow that the evil of the properly-con- 
sidered real existence does predominate over the good ? 

In order that a just estimate be made by Mr. Volney's " aged 
person," and from this estimate a judicious choice : — in order, 
again, that from this estimate and choice, we deduce any clear 
comparison of good with evil in human existence, it will be ne- 
cessary that we obtain the opinion, or " choice," upon this point, 
from an aged person, who shall be in condition to appreciate, with 
precision, the hopes he is naturally led to leave out of question, 
but which reason tells us he would as strongly experience as ever, 
in the absolute re-living of the life. On the other hand, too, he 
must be in condition to dismiss from the estimate the fears which 
he actually feels, and which show him bodily the ills that are to 
happen, but which fears, again, reason assures us he would not, 
in the absolute secondary life, encounter. Now what mortal was 
ever in condition to make these allowances ? — to perform impossi- 
bilities in giving these considerations their due weight ? What 
mortal, then, was ever in condition to make a well-grounded 
choice ? How, from an ill-grounded one, are we to make deduc- 
tions which shall guide us aright ? How out of error shall we 

fabricate truth ? 

C. 

This reasoning is about as convincing as would be that of a 
traveller who, going from Maryland to New York without enter- 
ing Pennsylvania, should advance this feat as an argument against 
Leibnitz' Laio of Continuity — according to which nothing passes 
from one state to another without passing through all the inter- 
mediate states. 

CI. 

Macaulay, in his just admiration of Addison, over-rates Tickell, 
and does not seem to be aware how much the author of the 
"Elegy" is indebted to French models. Boileau, especially, he 
robbed without mercy, and without measure. A flagrant exam- 
ple is here. Boileau has the lines : 

En vain contre " Le Cid" un ministre se ligue ; 
Tout Paris pour Chimene a les yeux de Rodrigue. 

Tickell thus appropriates them : 

"While the charm'd reader with thy thought complies, 
And views thy Rosamond with Henry's eyes. 
Vol. III.— 23 



MARGINALIA. 



CII. 
Stolen, body and soul, (and spoilt in the stealing) from a pa- 
per of the same title in the "European Magazine" for December, 
1817. Blunderingly done throughout, and must have cost more 
trouble than an original thing. This makes paragraph 33 of my 
" Chapter on American Cribbage^ The beauty of these exposes 
must lie in the precision and unanswerability with which they are 
given — in day and date — in chapter and verse — and, above all, 
in an unveiling of the minute trickeries by which the thieves hope 
to disguise their stolen wares. I must soon a tale unfold, and an 

astonishing tale it will be. The C bears away the bell. The 

ladies, however, should positively not be guilty of these tricks ; — 
for one has never the heart to unmask or deplume them. After 
all, there is this advantage in purloining one's magazine papers : — 
we are never forced to dispose of them under prime cost. 

can 

Amare et sapere vix Deo conceditur, as the acute Seneca well observes. 
However acute might be Seneca, still he was not sufficiently 
acute to say this. The sentence is often attributed to him, but is not 
to be found in his works. "Semel insanavimus omnes" a phrase 
often quoted, is invariably placed to the account of Horace, and 
with equal error. It is from the " De Honesto Amore v of the 
Italian Mantuanus, who has 

Id commune malum ; semel insanavimus omnes. 
In the title, "De Honesto Amore" by the way, Mantuanus mis- 
conceives the force of honestus — just as Dryden does in his trans- 
lation of Virgil's 

Et quocunque Deus circum caput egit honestum ; 
which he renders 

On whate'er side he turns his honest face. 

CIV. 
No ; — he fell by his own fame. Like Richmann, he was blasted 
by the fires himself had sought, and obtained, from the Heavens. 

CV. 
How overpowering a style is that of Curran ! I use "over- 
powering" in the sense of the English exquisite. I can imagine 
nothing more distressing than the extent, of his eloquence. 



MARGINALIA. 631 



CVI. 

How radically has "Undine" been misunderstood! Beneath 
its obvious meaning there runs an under-current, simple, quite 
intelligible, artistically managed, and richly philosophical. 

From internal evidence afforded by the book itself, I gather 
that the author suffered from the ills of a mal-arranged mar- 
riage — the bitter reflections thus engendered, inducing the fable. 

In the contrast between the artless, thoughtless, and careless 
character of Undine before possessing a soul, and her serious, en- 
wrapt, and anxious yet happy condition after possessing it, — a 
condition which, with all its multiform disquietudes, she still feels 
to be preferable to her original state, — Fouque has beautifully 
painted the difference between the heart unused to love, and the 
heart which has received its inspiration. 

The jealousies which follow the marriage, arising from the con- 
duct of Bertalda, are but the natural troubles of love ; but the 
persecutions of Kuhleborn and the other water-spirits who take 
umbrage at Huldbrand's treatment of his wife, are meant to pic- 
ture certain difficulties from the interference of relations in con- 
jugal matters — difficulties which the author has himself expe- 
rienced. The warning of Undine to Huldbrand — " Reproach me 
not upon the waters, or we part forever " — is intended to embody 
the truth that quarrels between man and wife are seldom or never 
irremediable unless when taking place in the presence of third 
parties. The second wedding of the knight with his gradual for- 
getfulness of Undine, and Undine's intense grief beneath the 
waters — are dwelt upon so pathetically — so passionately — that 
there can be no doubt of the author's personal opinions on the 
subject of second marriages — no doubt of his deep personal in- 
terest in the question. How thrillingly are these few and simple 
words made to convey his belief that the mere death of a be- 
loved wife does not imply a separation so final or so complete as 
to justify an union with another ! 

The fisherman had loved Undine with exceeding tenderness, and it was a 
doubtful conclusion to his mind that the mere disappearance of his beloved 
child could be properly viewed as her death. 

This is where the old man is endeavoring to dissuade the knight 
from wedding Bertalda. 



532 MARGINALIA. 



I cannot say whether the novelty of the conception of " Un- 
dine," or the loftiness and purity of its ideality, or the intensity 
of its pathos, or the rigor of its simplicity, or the high artistical 
ability with which all are combined into a well-kept, vtell-motivirt 
whole of absolute unity of effect — is the particular chiefly to be 
admired. 

How delicate and graceful are the transitions from subject to 
subject ! — a point severely testing the autorial power — as, when, 
for the purposes of the story, it becomes necessary that the 
knight, with Undine and Bertalda, shall proceed down the Dan- 
ube. An ordinary novelist would have here tormented both 
himself and his readers, in his search for a sufficient motive for 
the voyage. But, in a fable such as " Undine," how all-suffi- 
cient — how well in keeping — appears the simple motive as- 
signed ! — 

In this grateful union of friendship and affection, winter came and passed 
away ; and spring, with its foliage of tender green, and its heaven of softest 
Dlue, succeeded to gladden the hearts of the three inmates of the castle. 
What wonder, then, that its storks and swallows inspired them also with a 
disposition to travel ? 

CVII. 

I have at length attained the last page, which is a thing to 
thank God for ; and all this may be logic, but I am sure it is no- 
thing more. Until I get the means of refutation, however, I 
must be content to say, with the Jesuits, Le Sueur and Jacquier, 
that " I acknowledge myself obedient to the decrees of the Pope 
against the motion of the earth." 

CVIII. 

Not so: — The first number of the "Gentleman's Magazine" 
was published on the first of January, 1731 ; but long before 
this — in 1681 — there appeared the " Monthly Recorder" with all 
the magazine features. I have a number of the " London Maga- 
zine," dated 1760 ; — commenced 1732, at least, but I have reason 
to think much earlier. 

CIX. 

" Rhododaphne" (who wrote it ?) is brim-full of music : — e. g. 

By living streams, in sylvan shades, 

Where wind and wave symphonious make 
Rich melody, the youths and maids 

No more with choral music wake 

Lone Echo from her tangled brake. 
22* 



MARGINALIA. 533 



CX. 

I have just finished the " Mysteries of Paris " — a work of un- 
questionable power — a museum of novel and ingenious incident 
— a paradox of childish folly and consummate skill. It has this 
point in common with all the " convulsive " fictions — that the in- 
cidents are consequential from the premises, while the premises 
themselves are laughably incredible. Admitting, for instance, the 
possibility of such a man as Rodolphe, and of such a state of so- 
ciety as would tolerate his perpetual interference, we have no dif- 
ficulty in agreeing to admit the possibility of his accomplishing 
all that is accomplished. Another point which distinguishes the 
Sue school, is the total want of the drs celare artem. In effect 
the writer is always saying to the reader, " Now — in one moment 
— you shall see what you shall see. I am about to produce on 
you a remarkable impression. Prepare to have your imagination, 
or your pity, greatly excited." The wires are not only not conceal- 
ed, but displayed as things to be admired, equally with the puppets 
they set in motion. The result is, that in perusing, for example, 
a pathetic chapter in the " Mysteries of Paris " we say to our- 
selves, without shedding a tear — " Now, here is something which 
'will be sure to move every reader to tears." The philosophical 
motives attributed to Sue are absurd in the extreme. His first, 
and in fact his sole object, is to make an exciting, and therefore 
saleable book. The cant (implied or direct) about the ameliora- 
tion of society, etc., is but a very usual trick among authors, 
whereby they hope to add such a tone of dignity or utilitarianism 
to their pages as shall gild the pill of their licentiousness. The 
ruse is even more generally employed by way of engrafting a 
meaning upon the otherwise unintelligible. In the latter case, 
however, this ruse is an after-thought, manifested in the shape of 
a moral, either appended (as in iEsop) or dovetailed into the body 
of the work, piece by piece, with great care, but never without 
leaving evidence of its after-insertion. 

The translation (by C. H. Town) is very imperfect, and, by a 
too literal rendering of idioms, contrives to destroy the whole tone 
of the original. Or, perhaps, I should say a too literal rendering 
of local peculiarities of phrase. There is one point (never yet, I 
believe, noticed) which, obviously, should be considered in trans- 



534 MARGINALIA. 



lation. We should so render the original that the version should 
impress the people for whom it is intended, just as the original 
impresses the people for whom it {the original) is intended. Now, 
if we rigorously translate mere local idiosyncrasies of phrase (to 
say nothing of idioms) we inevitably distort the author's designed 
impression. We are sure to produce a whimsical, at least, if not 
always a ludicrous, effect — for novelties, in a case of this kind, are 
incongruities — oddities. A distinction, of course, should be ob- 
served between those peculiarities of phrase which appertain to 
the nation and those which belong to the author himself — for 
these latter will have a similar effect upon all nations, and should 
be literally translated. It is merely the general inattention to the 
principle here proposed, which has given rise to so much interna- 
tional depreciation, if not positive contempt, as regards literature. 
The English reviews, for example, have abundant allusions to what 
they call the " frivolousness " of French letters — an idea chiefly 
derived from the impression made by the French manner merely 
— this manner, again, having in it nothing essentially frivolous, 
but affecting all foreigners as such (the English especially) through 
that oddity of which I have already assigned the origin. The 
French return the compliment, complaining of the British gaucherie 
in style. The phraseology of every nation has a taint of drollery 
about it in the ears of every other nation speaking a different 
tongue. Now, to convey the true spirit of an author, this taint 
should be corrected in translation. We should pride ourselves 
less upon literality and more upon dexterity at paraphrase. Is it 
not clear that, by such dexterity, a translation may be made to 
convey to a foreigner a juster conception of an origiual than could 
the original itself? 

The distinction I have made between mere idioms (which, of 
course, should never be literally rendered) and " local idiosyncra- 
sies of phrase,'" may be exemplified by a passage at page 291 of 
Mr. Town's translation : 

Never mind ! Go in there ! You will take the cloak of Calebasse. You 
will wrap yourself in it, etc., etc. 

These are the words of a lover to his mistress, and are meant 

kindly, although imperatively. They embody a local peculiarity — 

a French peculiarity of phrase, and (to French ears) convey no- 



MARGINALIA. 535 



thing dictatorial. To our own, nevertheless, they sound like the 
command of a military officer to his subordinate, and thus pro- 
duce an effect quite different from that intended. The translation, 
in such case, should be a bold paraphrase. For example : — u I 
must insist upon your wrapping yourself in the cloak of Ca- 
lebasse." 

Mr. Town's version of " The Mysteries of Paris," however, is 
not objectionable on the score of excessive literality alone, but 
abounds in misapprehensions of the author's meaning. One of 
the strangest errors occurs at page 368, where we read : 

" From a wicked, brutal savage and riotous rascal, he has made me a kind 
of honest man by saying only two words to me ; but these words, ' voyez 
vous,' were like magic." 

Here " voyez vous " are made to be the two magical words spo- 
ken ; but the translation should run — " these words, do you see ? 
were like magic." The actual words described as producing the 
magical effect are " heart " and " honor." 

Of similar character is a curious mistake at page 245. 

" He is a gueux fifti and an attack will not save him," added Nicholas. " A 
— yes," said the widow. 

Many readers of Mr. Town's translation have no doubt been 
puzzled to perceive the force or relevancy of the widow's " A — 
yes " in this case. I have not the original before me, but take it 
for granted that it runs thus, or nearly so : — " 11 est un gueux fini 
et un assaut ne Vintimidera pas." " Un — oui /" dit la veuve. 

It must be observed that, in vivacious French colloquy, the oui 
seldom implies assent to the letter, but generally to the spirit, of 
a proposition. Thus a Frenchman usually says " yes " where an 
Englishman would say " no." The latter's reply, for example, to 
the sentence " An attack will not intimidate him," would be " No " 
— that is to say, " I grant you that it would not." The French- 
man, however, answers " Yes " — meaning, " I agree with what 
you say — it would not." Both replies, of course, reaching the 
same point, although by opposite routes. With this understand- 
ing, it will be seen that the true version of the widow's " Un — 
oui /" should be, " One attack, I grant you, might not," and that 
this is the version becomes apparent when we read the words im- 
mediately following — " but every day — every day it is hell !" 



536 MARGINALIA. 



An instance of another class of even more reprehensible blun- 
ders, is to be found on page 297, where Bras-Rouge is made to 
say to a police officer — " No matter ; it is not of that I complain ; 
every trade has its disagreements." Here, no doubt, the French is 
desagremens — inconveniences — disadvantages — unpleasantnesses. 
Desagremens conveys disagreements not even so nearly as, in Latin, 
religio implies religion. 

I was not a little surprised, in turning over these pages, to come 
upon the admirable, thrice admirable story called " Gringalet et 
Coupe en Deux" which is related by Pique- Vinaigre to his com- 
panions in La Force. Rarely have I read anything of which the 
exquisite skill so delighted me. For my soul I could not suggest 
a fault in it — except, perhaps, that the intention of telling a very 
pathetic story is a little too transparent. 

But I say that I was surprised in coming upon this story — and 
I was so, because one of its points has been suggested to M. Sue 
by a tale of my own. Coupe en Deux has an ape remarkable for its 
size, strength, ferocity, and propensity to imitation. Wishing to 
commit a murder so cunningly that discovery would be impossible, 
the master of this animal teaches it to imitate the functions of a 
barber, and incites it to cut the throat of a child, under the idea 
that, when the murder is discovered, it will be considered the un- 
instigated deed of the ape. 

On first seeing this, I felt apprehensive that some of my friends 
would accuse me of plagiarizing from it my " Murders in the Rue 
Morgue." But I soon called to mind that this latter was first 
published in " Graham's Magazine" for April, 1841. Some years 
ago, "The Paris Charivari " copied my story with complimentary 
comments ; objecting, however, to the Rue Morgue on the ground 
that no such street (to the Charivari's knowledge) existed in Paris. 
I do not wish, of course, to look upon M. Sue's adaptation of my 
property in any other light than that of a compliment. The si- 
milarity may have been entirely accidental. 

CXI. 

Has any one observed the excessively close resemblance in sub- 
ject, thought, general manner and particular point, which this 
clever composition* bears to the " Audibras " of Butler ? 
* The " Satyre Menipee." 



MARGINALIA. 537 



CXII. 

The a priori reasoners upon government are, of all plausible 
people, the most preposterous. They only argue too cleverly to 
permit my thinking them silly enough to be themselves dvsceived 
by their own arguments. Yet even this is possible ; for there is 
something in the vanity of logic which addles a man's brains. 
Your true logician gets, in time, to be logicalized, and then, so 
far as regards himself, the universe is one word. A thing, for 
him, no longer exists. He deposits upon a sheet of paper a cer- 
tain assemblage of syllables, and fancies that their meaning is ri- 
veted by the act of deposition. I am serious in the opinion that 
some such process of thought passes through the mind of the 
" practised " logician, as he makes note of the thesis proposed. 
He is not aware that he thinks in this way — but, unwittingly, he 
so thinks. The syllables deposited acquire, in his view, a new 
character. While afloat in his brain, he might have been brought 
to admit the possibility that these syllables were variable exponents 
of various phases of thought ; but he will not admit this if he 
once gets them upon the paper. 

In a single page of " Mill," I find the word " force " employed 
four times ; and each employment varies the idea. The fact is 
that a priori argument is much worse than useless except in the 
mathematical sciences, where it is possible to obtain precise mean- 
ings. If there is any one subject in the world to which it is ut- 
terly and radically inapplicable, that subject is Government. The 
idmtical arguments used to sustain Mr. Bentham's positions, 
might, with little exercise of ingenuity, be made to overthrow 
them ; and, by ringing small changes on the words " leg-of-mut- 
ton," and " turnip " (changes so gradual as to escape detection,) 
I could " demonstrate " that a turnip was, is, and of right ought 
to be, a leg-of-mutton. 

CXIII. 

The concord of sound-and-sense principle was never better ex- 
emplified than in these lines* : — 

Ast amans charae thalamum puellae 
Deserit flens, et tibi verba dicit 
Aspera amplexu teneras cupito a — 

— vulsus amicaa. 



* By M. Anton. Flaminius. 

23* 



538 MARGINALIA. 



CXIV. 

Miss Gould has much in common with Mary Howitt; — the 
characteristic trait of each being a sportive, quaint, epigrammatic 
grace, that keeps clear of the absurd by never employing itself 
upon very exalted topics. The verbal style of the two ladies is 
identical. Miss Gould has the more talent of the two, but is 
somewhat the less original. She has occasional flashes of a far 
higher order of merit than appertains to her ordinary manner. 
Her " Dying Storm " might have been written by Campbell. 

CXV. 

Cornelius Webbe is one of the best of that numerous school 
of extravaganzists who sprang from the ruins of Lamb. We 
must be in perfectly good humor, however, with ourselves and all 
the world, to be much pleased with such works as " The Man 
about Town," in which the harum-scarum, hyperexcursive man- 
nerism is carried to an excess which is frequently fatiguing. 

CXVL 

Nearly, if not quite the best " Essay on a Future State."* 
The arguments called " Deductions from onr Reason," are, rightly 
enough, addressed more to the feelings (a vulgar term not to be 
done without,) than to our reason. The arguments deduced from 
Revelation are (also rightly enough) brief. The pamphlet proves 
nothing, of course ; its theorem is not to be proved. 

CXVII. 

The style is so involute,f that one cannot help fancying it must 
be falsely constructed. If the use of language is to convey ideas, 
then it is nearly as much a demerit that our words seem to 
be, as that they are, indefensible. A man's grammar, like Caesar's 
wife, must not only be pure, but above suspicion of impurity. 

CXVIII. 

It is the curse of a certain order of mind, that it can never rest 
satisfied with the consciousness of its ability to do a thing. Not 
even is it content with doing it. It must both know and show 
how it was done. 

* A sermon on a Future State, combating the opinion that " Death is an 
Eternal Sleep." By Gilbert Austin. London. 1*794. 
f " Night and Morning." 



MARGINALIA. 539 



CXIX. 
Not so : — a gentleman with a pug nose is a contradiction in 
terms. — " Who can live idly and without manual labor, and will 
bear the port, charge and countenance of a gentleman, he alone 
should be called master and be taken for a gentleman." — Sir 
Thomas Smith's " Commonwealth of England." 

cxx. 

Here is something at which I find it impossible not to laugh j* 
and yet, I laugh without knowing why. That incongruity is the 
principle of all nonconvulsive laughter, is to my mind as clearly 
demonstrated as any problem in the " Principia Mathematica ;" 
but here I cannot trace the incongruous. It is there, I know. 
Still I do not see it. In the meantime let me laugh. 

CXXI. 

So violent was the state of parties in England, that I was assured by 
several that the Duke of Marlborough was a coward and Pope a fool. — 
Voltaire. 

Both propositions have since been very seriously entertained, 
quite independently of all party-feeling. That Pope was a fool, 
indeed seems to be an established point at present with the Crazy - 
ites — what else shall I call them ? 

CXXII. 

Imitators are not, necessarily, unoriginal — except at the exact 
points of the imitation. Mr. Longfellow, decidedly the most 
audacious imitator in America, is markedly original, or, in 
other words, imaginative, upon the whole ; and many persons 
have, from the latter branch of the fact, been at a loss to compre- 
hend, and therefore, to believe, the former. Keen sensibility of 
appreciation — that is to say, the poetic sentiment (in distinction 
from the poetic power) leads almost inevitably to imitation. Thus 
all great poets have been gross imitators. It is, however, a mere 
non distributio medii hence to infer, that all great imitators are 

poets. 

r CXXIII. 

"With all his faults, however, this author is a man of respectable powers. 

Thus discourses, of William Godtoin, the w London Monthly 
Magazine," May, 1818. 

* Translation of the Book of Jonah into German Hexameters. By J. G. 
A. Muller. Contained in the (i Memorabilien " von Pmdus. 



540 MARGINALIA. 



CXXIV. 
As a descriptive poet, Mr. Street is to be highly commend- 
ed. He not only describes with force and fidelity — giving 
us a clear conception of the thing described — but never describes 
what to the poet, should be nondescript. He appears, however, 
not at any time to have been aware that mere description is not 
poetry at all. We demand creation — 7rotij«$. About Mr. Street 
there seems to be no spirit. He is all matter — substance — what 
the chemists would call " simple substance " — and exceedingly 

simple it is. 

CXXV. 

I never read a personally abusive paragraph in the newspapers, 
without calling to mind the pertinent query propounded by John- 
son to Goldsmith: — "My dear Doctor, what harm does it do a 
man to call him Holofernes ?" 

CXXVL 

"Were I to consign these volumes,* altogether, to the hands of 
any very young friend of mine, I could not, in conscience, de- 
scribe them otherwise than as "tammulti, tarn grandes, tarn pre- 
tiosi codices ;" and it would grieve me much to add the " incendltc 
omnes Mas membranas." f 

CXXVII. 

In reading some books we occupy ourselves chiefly with the 

thoughts of the author ; in perusing others, exclusively with our 

own. And thisj is one of the " others " — a suggestive book. 

But there are two classes of suggestive books — the positively and 

the negatively suggestive. The former suggest by what they say ; 

the latter by what they might and should have said. It makes 

little difference, after all. In either case the true book-purpose is 

answered. 

CXXVIII. 

It is observable that, in his brief account of the Creation, 

Moses employs the words, Bar a Elohim (the Gods created,) 

no less than thirty times ; using the noun in the plural with the 

verb in the singular. Elsewhere, however — in Deuteronomy, for 

example — he employs the singular, Eloah. 

* Of Voltaire. f St. Austin de libris Manichceis, 

\ Mercier's " L'an deux mille quatre cents quaronte" 



MARGINALIA. 541 



CXXIX. 

It is a thousand pities that the puny witticisms of a few pro- 
fessional objectors should have power to prevent, even for a year, 
the adoption of a name for our country. At present we have, 
clearly, none. There should be no hesitation about " Appalachia." 
In the first place, it is distinctive. "America"* is not, and can 
never be made so. We may legislate as much as we please, and 
assume for our country whatever name we think right — but to us 
it will be no name, to any purpose for which a name is needed, 
unless we can take it away from the regions which employ it at 
present. South America is " America," and will insist upon re- 
maining so. In the second place " Appalachia" is indigenous, 
springing from one of the most magnificent and distinctive fea- 
tures of the country itself. Thirdly, in employing this word we 
do honor to the Aborigines, whom, hitherto, we have at all points 
unmercifully despoiled, assassinated and dishonored. Fourthly, 
the name is the suggestion of, perhaps, the most deservedly emi- 
nent among all the pioneers of American literature. It is but 
just that Mr. Irving should name the land for which, in letters, 
he first established a name. The last, and by far the most truly 
important consideration of all, however, is the music of " Appa- 
lachia" itself; nothing could be more sonorous, more liquid, or 
of fuller volume, while its length is just sufficient for dignity. 
How the guttural "Alleghania" could ever have been preferred 
for a moment is difficult to conceive. I yet hope to find " Appa- 
lachia " assumed. 

cxxx. 

The " British Spy " of Wirt seems an imitation of the " Turk- 
ish Spy," upon which Montesquieu's " Persian Letters " are also 
based. Marana's work was in Italian — Doctor Johnson errs. 

CXXXI. 

M , as a matter of course, would rather be abused by the 

critics, than not be noticed by them at all ; but he is hardly to 
be blamed for growling a little, now and then, over their criti- 
cisms — just as a dog might do if pelted with bones. 

* Mr. Field, in a meeting of " The New York Historical Society," propos- 
ed that we take the name of " America," and bestow " Columbia " upon the 
continent. 



542 MARGINALIA. 



CXXXII. 

About the " Antigone," as about all the ancient plays, there 
seems to me a certain baldness, the result of inexperience in 
art, but which pedantry would force us to believe the result of 
a studied and supremely artistic simplicity. Simplicity, indeed, 
is a very important feature in all true art — but not the simplicity 
which we see in the Greek drama. That of the Greek sculpture 
is every thing that can be desired, because here the art in itself is sim- 
plicity in itself and in its elements. The Greek sculptor chiselled 
his forms from what he saw before him every day, in a beauty near- 
er to perfection than any work of any Cleomenes in the world. But 
in the drama, the direct, straightforward, un-German Greek had no 
Nature so immediately presented from which to make copy. He 
did what he could — but I do not hesitate to say that that was 
exceedingly little worth. The profound sense of one or two tra- 
gic, or rather, melo-dramatic elements (such as the idea of inex- 
orable Destiny) — this sense gleaming at intervals from out the 
darkness of the ancient stage, serves, in the very imperfection of its 
development, to show, not the dramatic ability, but the dramatic 
lability of the ancients. In a word, the simple arts spring into 
perfection at their origin ; the complex as inevitably demand the 
long and painfully progressive experience of ages. To the Greeks, 
beyond doubt, their drama seemed perfection — it fully answered, to 
them, the dramatic end, excitement, and this fact is urged as proof 
of their drama's perfection in itself. It need only be said, in reply, 
that their art and their sense of art were, necessarily, on a level. 

CXXXIII. 
That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to 
be, when it suits him, a coward. 

CXXXIV. 
A corrupt and impious heart — a merely prurient fancy — a Sa- 
turnian brain in which invention has only the phosphorescent 
glimmer of rottenness.* Worthless, body and soul — a foul re- 
proach to the nation that engendered and endures him — a fetid 
battener upon the garbage of thought — no man — a beast — a 
pig : Less scrupulous than a carrion-crow, and not very much 
less filthy than a Wilmer. 

* Michel Masson, author of " Le Cceur dune Jeune Mile? 



MARGINALIA. 543 



CXXXV. 

If ever mortal " wreaked his thoughts upon expression," it was 
Shelley. If ever poet sang — as a bird sings — earnestly — impul- 
sively — with utter abandonment — to himself solely — and for the 
mere joy of his own song — that poet was the author of " The 
Sensitive Plant." Of art — beyond that which is instinctive with 
genius — he either had little or disdained all. He really disdain- 
ed that Rule which is an emanation from Law, because his own 
soul was Law in itself. His rhapsodies are but the rough notes — 
the stenographic memoranda of poems — memoranda which, be- 
cause they were all-sufficient for his own intelligence, he cared not 
to be at the trouble of writing out in full for mankind. In all 
his works we find no conception thoroughly wrought. For this 
reason he is the most fatiguing of poets. Yet he wearies in saying 
too little rather than too much. What in him, seems the diffuse- 
ness of one idea, is the conglomerate concision of many : and 
this species of concision it is, which renders him obscure. With 
such a man, to imitate was out of the question. It would have 
served no purpose; for he spoke to his own spirit alone, which 
would have comprehended no alien tongue. Thus he was pro- 
foundly original. His quaintness arose from intuitive perception 
of that truth to whi ch Bacon alone has given distinct utterance : — 
"There is no exquisite Beauty which has not some strangeness in 
its proportions." But whether obscure, original, or quaint, Shel- 
ley had no affectations. He was at all times sincere. 

From his ruins, there sprang into existence, affronting the 
heavens, a tottering and fantastic pagoda, in which the salient 
angles, tipped with mad jangling bells, were the idiosyncratic 
faults of the original — faults which cannot be considered such in 
view of his purposes, but which are monstrous when we regard 
his works as addressed to mankind. A " school " arose — if that 
absurd term must still be employed — a school — a system of rules 
upon the basis of the Shelley who had none. Young men innu- 
merable, dazzled with the glare and bewildered by the bizarrerie 
of the lightning that flickered through the clouds of " Alastor " 
had no trouble whatever in heaping up imitative vapors, but, for 
the lightning, were forced to be content with its spectrum, in 
which the bizarrerie appeared without the fire. Nor were mature 



544 MARGINALIA. 



minds unimpressed by the contemplation of a greater and more 
mature ; and thus, gradually, into this school of all Lawlessness — 
of obscurity, quaintness and exaggeration — were interwoven the 
out-of-place didacticism of Wordsworth, and the more anomalous 
metaphysicianism of Coleridge. Matters were now fast verging 
to their worst ; and at length, in Tennyson poetic inconsistency 
attained its extreme. But it was precisely this extreme (for the 
greatest truth and the greatest error are scarcely two points in a 
circle) which, following the law of all extremes, wrought in him 
(Tennyson) a natural and inevitable revulsion ; leading him first to 
contemn, and secondly to investigate, his early manner, and finally 
to winnow, from its magnificent elements, the truest and purest 
of all poetical styles. But not even yet is the process complete; 
and for this reason in part, but chiefly on account of the mere 
fortuitousness of that mental and moral combination which shall 
unite in one person (if ever it shall) the Shellyan abandon and the 
Tennysonian poetic sense, with the most profound Art (based both 
in Instinct and Analysis) and the sternest Will properly to blend 
and rigorously to control all — chiefly, I say, because such combi- 
nation of seeming antagonisms will be only a "happy chance" 
— the world has never yet seen the noblest poem which, possibly, 
can be composed. 

CXXXVI. 

It is not proper, (to use a gentle word,) nor does it seem 
courageous, to attack our foe by name in spirit and in effect, 
so that all the world shall know whom we mean, while we say to 
ourselves, "I have not attacked this man by name in the eye, and 
according to the letter, of the law " — yet how often are men who 
call themselves gentlemen, guilty of this meanness ! We need 
reform at this point of our Literary Morality : — very sorely too, 
at another — the system of anonymous reviewing. Not one re- 
spectable word can be said in defence of this most unfair — this 
most despicable and cowardly practice. 
CXXXVII. 

To villify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man 
can himself attain greatness. The Crab might never have be- 
come a Constellation but for the courage it evinced in nibbling 
Hercules on the heel. 



MARGINALIA. 545 



CXXXVIII. 

I hardly know how to account for the repeated failures of 
John Neal as regards the construction of his works. His art 
is great and of a high character — but it is massive and unde- 
tailed. He seems to be either deficient in a sense of completeness, 
or unstable in temperament ; so that he becomes wearied with his 
work before getting it done. He always begins well — vigorously 
— startlingly — proceeds by fits — much at random — now prosing, 
now gossiping, now running away with his subject, now exciting 
vivid interest ; but his conclusions are sure to be hurried and 
indistinct ; so that the reader, perceiving a falling-ofT where he 
expects a climax, is pained, and, closing the book with dissatisfac- 
tion, is in no mood to give the author credit for the vivid sensations 
which have been aroused during the progress of perusal. Of all 
literary foibles the most fatal, perhaps, is that of defective climax. 
Nevertheless, I should be inclined to rank John Neal first, or at 
all events second, among our men of indisputable genius. Is it, 
or is it not a fact, that the air of a Democracy agrees better with 
mere Talent than with Genius ? 

CXXXIX. 
Among the moralists who keep themselves erect by the 
perpetual swallowing of pokers, it is the fashion to decry the 
u fashionable " novels. These works have their demerits ; but a 
vast influence which they exert for an undeniable good, has never 
yet been duly considered. " Ingenuos didicisse fideliter libros, 
emollit mores nee sinit esse feros." Now, the fashionable novels 
are just the books which most do circulate among the class 
unfashionable ; and their effect in softening the worst callosities — 
in smoothing the most disgusting asperities of vulgarism, is prodi- 
gious. With the herd, to admire and to attempt imitation are 
the same thing. What if, in this case, the manners imitated are 
frippery ; better frippery than brutality — and, after all, there is 
little danger that the intrinsic value of the sturdiest iron will be 
impaired by a coating of even the most diaphanous gilt. 

CXL. 

The ancients had at least half an idea that we travelled 
on horseback to heaven. See a passage of Passeri, " de anirnce 
transvectione" — quoted by Caylus. See, also, many old tombs. 



546 MARGINALIA. 



CXLI. 

It is said in Isaiah, respecting Idumea, that " none shall pass 
through thee for ever and ever." Dr. Keith here* insists, as usual, 
upon understanding the passage in its most strictly literal sense. 
He attempts to prove that neither Burckhardt nor Irby passed 
through the country — merely penetrating to Petra, and returning. 
And our Mr. John Stephens entered Idumea with the deliberate 
design of putting the question to test. He wished to see whether 
it was meant that Idumea should not be passed through, and 
* accordingly," says he, " I passed through it from one end to the 
other." Here is error on all sides. In the first place, he was not 
sufficiently informed in the Ancient Geography to know that the 
Idumea which he certainly did pass through, is not the Idumea 
or Edom, intended in the prophecy — the latter lying much farther 
eastward. In the next place, whether he did or did not pass 
through the true Idumea — or whether anybody, of late days, did 
or did not pass through it — is a point of no consequence either to 
the proof or to the disproof of the literal fulfilment of the Prophe- 
cies. For it is quite a mistake on the part of Dr. Keith — his 
supposition that travelling through Idumea is prohibited at all. 

The words conceived to embrace the prohibition, are found in 
Isaiah 34 : 10, and are Lenetsach netsachim ein over bah : — literally 
— Lenetsach, for an eternity ; netsachim, of eternities ; ein, not ; 
over, moving about ; bah, in it. That is to say ; for an eternity of 
eternities, (there shall) not (be any one) moving about in it — not 
through it. The participle over refers to one moving to and fro, 
or up and down, and is the same term which is translated " current " 
as an epithet of money, in Genesis 23 : 16. The prophet means 
only that there shall be no mark of life in the land — no living 
being there — no one moving up and down in it. He refers mere- 
ly to its general abandonment and desolation. 

In the same way we have received an erroneous idea of the 
meaning of Ezekiel 35: 7, where the same region is mentioned. 
The common version runs : — "Thus will I make Mount Seir most 
desolate, and cut off from it him that passeth out and him that 
returneth," — a sentence which Dr. Keith views as he does the one 



* " Literal Fulfilment of the Prophecies: 



MARGINALIA. 547 



from Isaiah ; that is, he supposes it to forbid any travelling in 
Idumea under penalty of death ; instancing Burckhardt's death 
shortly after his return, as confirming this supposition, on the 
ground that he died in consequence of the rash attempt. 

Now the words of Ezekiel are : — Venathati eth-har Seir lesh- 
immanah ushemamah, vehichrati mimmennu over vasal : — literally 
Venathati, and I will give ; eth-har, the mountain ; Seir, Seir ; 
leshimmamah, for a desolation ; ushemamah, and a desolation ; 
vehichrati, and I will cut off; mimmennu, from it ; over, him that 
goeth ; vasal, and him that returneth : — and I will give Mount 
Seir for an utter desolation, and I will cut off from it him that 
passeth and repasseth therein. The reference here is as in the 
preceding passage : allusion is made to the inhabitants of the land, 
as moving about in it, and actively employed in the business of 
life. I am sustained in the translation of over vasal by Gesenius 
S 5 — vol 2 — p. 570, Leo's Trans. : Compare also Zachariah 7: 14 
and 9 : 8. There is something " analogous in the Hebrew Greek 

phrase, at Acts, 9 I 28 xai iv per' avrou eiffnopevoftei/og Kai 'cKiropevojievos 2v 

'hpov<ra\r]n — And he. was with them in Jerusalem, coming in and 
going out. The Latin versatus est is precisely paraphrastic. The 
meaning is that Saul, the new convert, was on intimate terms with 
the true believers in Jerusalem ; moving about among them to and 
fro, or in and out. 

CXLIL 
The author of " Cromwell " does better as a writer of ballads 
than of prose. He has fancy, and a fine conception of rhythm. 
But his romantico-histories have all the effervescence of his verse, 
without its flavor. Nothing worse than his tone can be invented : 
— turgid sententiousness, involute, spasmodically straining after 
effect. And to render matters worse, he is as thorough an unisty- 
list as Cardinal Chigi, who boasted that he wrote with the same 
pen for half a century. 

CXLIII. 
Our "blues" are increasing in number at a great rate; and 
should be decimated, at the very least. Have we no critic with 
nerve enough to hang a dozen or two of them, in terrorem ? He 
must use a silk-cord, of course — as they do, in Spain, with all 
grandees of the blue blood — of the " sangre azula." 



548 MARGINALIA. 



CXLIV. 
For all the rhetorician's rules 
Teach nothing but to name the tools. — Hudibras. 

What these oft-quoted lines go to show is, that a falsity in verse 
will travel faster and endure longer than a falsity in prose. The 
man who would sneer or stare at a silly proposition nakedly put, 
will admit that " there is a good deal in that " when " that " is 
the point of an epigram shot into the ear. The rhetorician's 
rules — if they are rules — teach him not only to name his tools, 
but to use his tools, the capacity of his tools — their extent — their 
limit ; and from an examination of the nature of the tools — (an 
examination forced on him by their constant presence) — force him, 
also, into scrutiny and comprehension of the material on which 
the tools are employed, and thus, finally, suggest and give birth 
to new material for new tools. 

CXLV. 

Among his eidola of the den, the tribe, the forum, the thea- 
tre, etc., Bacon might well have placed the great eidolon of 
the parlor (or of the wit, as I have termed it in one of the pre- 
vious Marginalia) the idol whose worship blinds man to truth 
by dazzling him with the apposite. But what title could have 
been invented for that idol which has propagated, perhaps, more 
of gross error than all combined ?— the one, I mean, which 
demands from its votaries that they reciprocate cause and effect 
— reason in a circle — lift themselves from the ground by pulling 
up their pantaloons — and carry themselves on their own heads, 
in hand-baskets, from Beersheba to Dan. 

All — absolutely all the argumentation which I have seen on 
the nature of the soul, or of the' Deity, seems to me nothing but 
worship of this unnameable idol. Pour savoir ce qu'est Dieu, says 
Bielfeld, although nobody listens to the solemn truth, il fa.ut etre 
Dieu meme — and to reason about the reason is of all things the 
most unreasonable. At least, he alone is fit to discuss the topic 
who perceives at a glance the insanity of its discussion. 

CXLVI. 

I believe it is Montaigne who says — " People talk about think- 
ing, but, for my part, I never begin to think until I sit down to 
write." A better plan for him would have been, never to sit down 
to write until he had made an end of thinking. 



MARGINALIA. 549 



CXLVIL 
No doubt, the association of idea is somewhat singular — but I 
never can hear a crowd of people singing and gesticulating, all 
together, at an Italian opera, without fancying myself at Athens, 
listening to that particular tragedy, by Sophocles, in which he 
introduces a full chorus of turkeys, who set about bewailing the 
death of Meleager. It is noticeable in this connexion, by the 
way, that there is not a goose in the world who, in point of sa- 
gacity, would not feel itself insulted in being compared with a 
turkey. The French seem to feel this. In Paris, I am sure, no 

one would think of saying to Mr. F , " What a goose you 

are !" — " Quel dindon tu es !" would be the phrase employed as 

equivalent. 

CXLVIII. 
Alas ! how many American critics neglect the happy sugges- 
tion of M. Timon — " que le ministre de L' Instruction Publique 
doit lui-meme savoir parler Frangais." 

CXLIX. 

It is folly to assert, as some at present are fond of asserting, 
that the Literature of any nation or age was ever injured by 
plain speaking on the part of the Critics. As for American Let- 
ters, plain-speaking about them is, simply, the one thing needed. 
They are in a condition of absolute quagmire — a quagmire, to 
use the words of Victor Hugo, d'ou on ne peut se tirer par des 
periphrases — par des quemadmodums et des verumenimveros. 

CL. 

It is certainly very remarkable that although destiny is the 
ruling idea of the Greek drama, the word T^ (Fortune) does 
not appear once in the whole Iliad. 

CLI. 

Had John Bernouilli lived to have the experience of Fuller's 
occiput and sinciput, he would have abandoned, in dismay, his 
theory of the non-existence of hard bodies. 

CLII. 

They have ascertained, in China, that the abdomen is the seat 
of the soul ; and the acute Greeks considered it a waste of words 
to employ more than a single term, fpcvss, for the expression both 
of the mind and of the diaphragm. 



550 MARGINALIA. 



CLIII. 

Mr. Grattan, who, in general, writes well, has a bad habit of 
loitering — of toying with his subject, as a eat with a mouse, instead 
of grasping it firmly at once, and devouring it without ado. He 
takes up too much time in the ante-room. He has never done 
with his introductions. Sometimes one introduction is merely the 
vestibule to another ; so that by the time he arrives at his main 
theme, there is none of it left. He is afflicted with a perversity 
common enough even among otherwise good talkers — an irrepres- 
sible desire of tantalizing by circumlocution. 

If the greasy print here exhibited is, indeed, like Mr. Grattan,* 
then is Mr. Grattan like nobody else — for who else ever thrust 
forth, from beneath a wig of wire, the countenance of an over-done 
apple dumpling ? 

" What does a man learn by travelling ?" demanded Doctor 
Johnson, one day, in a great rage — " What did Lord Charlemont 
learn in his travels, except that there was a snake in one of the 
pyramids of Egypt?" — but had Doctor Johnson lived in the 
days of the Silk Buckinghams, he would have seen that, so far 
from thinking anything of finding a snake in a pyramid, your 
traveller would take his oath, at a moment's notice, of having 
found a pyramid in a snake. 

. CLV. 

The author of " Miserrimus " might have been W. G. Simms 
(whose " Martin Faber " is just such a work) — but is\ G. M. W. 
Reynolds, an Englishman, who wrote, also, " Albert de Rosann^ 
and " Pickwick Abroad " — both excellent things in their way. 

CLVI. 

L is busy in attempting to prove that his play was not 

fairly d d — that it is only " skotched, not killed ;" but if the 

poor play could speak from the tomb, I fancy it would sing with 
the opera heroine : 

The flattering error cease to prove ! 
Oh, let me be deceased ! 

* " High- Ways and By-ways." 

f [Mr. Poe was wrong. " Miserrimus" was written by W. M. Reynolds, who 
died at Fontainbleau in 1850. Ed.] 



MARGINALIA. 551 



CLVII. 

We may safely grant that the effects of the oratory of Demos- 
thenes were vaster than those wrought by the eloquence of any 
modern, and yet not controvert the idea that the modern eloquence, 
itself, is superior to that of the Greek. The Greeks were an excit- 
able, unread race, for they had no printed books. Viva voce 
exhortations carried with them, to their quick apprehensions, all 
the gigantic force of the new. They had much of that vivid inter- 
est which the first fable has upon the dawning intellect of the 
child — an interest which is worn away by the frequent perusal 
of similar things — by the frequent inception of similar fancies. 
The suggestions, the arguments, the incitements of the ancient 
rhetorician were, when compared with those of the modern, abso- 
lutely novel ; possessing thus an immense adventitious force — a 
force which has been, oddly enough, left out of sight in all esti- 
mates of the eloquence of the two eras. 

The finest philippic of the Greek would have been hooted at in 

the British House of Peers, while an impromptu of Sheridan, or 

of Brougham, would have carried by storm all the hearts and all 

the intellects of Athens. 

CLVIII. 

Much has been said, of late, about the necessity of maintaining 
a proper nationality in American Letters ; but what this nation- 
ality is, or what is to be gained by it, has never been distinctly 
understood. That an American should confine himself to Ameri- 
can themes, or even prefer them, is rather a political than a lit- 
erary idea — and at best is a questionable point. We would do 
well to bear in mind that " distance lends enchantment to the 
view." Ceteris paribus, a foreign theme is, in a strictly literary 
sense, to be preferred. After all, the world at large is the only 
legitimate stage for the autorial histrio. 

But of the need of that nationality which defends our own 
literature, sustains our own men of letters, upholds our own dig- 
nity, and depends upon our own resources, there cannot be the 
shadow of a doubt. Yet here is the very point at which we are 
most supine. We complain of our want of an International 
Copyright, on the ground that this want justifies our publishers 
in inundating us with British opinion in British books ; and yet 



552 MARGINALIA. 



when these very publishers, at their own obvious risk, and even 
obvious loss, do publish an American book, we turn up our noses 
at it with supreme contempt (this as a general thing) until it (the 
American book) has been dubbed "readable" by some illiterate 
Cockney critic. Is it too much to say that, with us, the opinion 
of Washington Irving — of Prescott — of Bryant — is a mere nullity 
in comparison with that of any anonymous sub-sub-editor of the 
Spectator, the Athenaeum, or the " London Punch" ? It is not 
saying too much, to say this. It is a solemn—an absolutely aw- 
ful act. Every publisher in the country will admit it to be a fact. 
There is not a more disgusting spectacle under the sun than our 
subserviency to British criticism. It is disgusting, first, because 
it is truckling, servile, pusillanimous — secondly, because of its 
gross irrationality. We know the British to bear us little but ill 
will — we know that, in no case, do they utter unbiassed opinions 
of American books — we know that in the few instances in which 
our writers have been treated with common decency in England, 
these writers have either openly paid homage to English institu- 
tions, or have had lurking at the bottom of their hearts a secret 
principle at war with Democracy : — we know all this, and yet, 
day after day, submit our necks to the degrading yoke of the 
crudest opinion that emanates from the fatherland. Now if we 
must have nationality, let it be a nationality that will throw off 
this yoke. 

The chief of the rhapsodists who have ridden us to death like 
the Old Man of the Mountain, is the ignorant and egotistical 
Wilson. We use the term rhapsodists with perfect deliberation : 
for, Macaulay, and Dilke, and one or two others, excepted, there 
is not in Great Britain a critic who can be fairly considered wor- 
thy the name. The Germans, and even the French, are infinitely 
superior. As regards Wilson, no man ever penned worse criti- 
cism or better rhodomontade. That he is " egotistical " his 
works show to all men, running as they read. That he is "ig- 
norant" let his absurd and continuous schoolboy blunders about 
Homer bear witness. Not long ago we ourselves pointed out a 
series of similar inanities in his review of Miss Barrett's poems — a 
series, we say, of gross blunders, arising from sheer ignorance — 



MARGINALIA. 553 



and we defy him or any one to answer a single syllable of what 
we then advanced. 

And yet this is the man whose simple dictum (to our shame be 
it spoken) has the power to make or to mar any American repu- 
tation ! In the last number of Blackwood, he has a continuation 
of the dull " Specimens of the British Critics," and makes occa- 
sion wantonly to insult one of the noblest of our poets, Mr. Low- 
ell. The point of the whole attack consists in the use of slang 
epithets and phrases of the most ineffably vulgar description. 
" Squabashes " is a pet term. " Faugh !" is another. We are 
Scotsmen to the spine /" says Sawney — as if the thing were not 
more than self-evident. Mr. Lowell is called " a magpie," an 
" ape," a " Yankee cockney," and his name is intentionally mis- 
written John Russell Lowell. Now were these indecencies perpe- 
trated by an American critic, that critic would be sent to Coventry 
by the whole press of the country, but since it is Wilson who 
insults, we, as in duty bound, not only submit to the insult, but 
echo it, as an excellent jest, throughout the length and breadth 
of the land. Quamdiw Catilina ? We do indeed demand the 
nationality of self-respect. In Letters as in Government we re- 
quire a Declaration of Independence. A better thing still would 
be a Declaration of War — and that war should be carried forth- 
with " into Africa." 

CLIX. 

The Doctor has excited great attention in America as well as in 
England, and has given rise to every variety of conjecture and 
opinion, not only concerning the author's individuality, but in re- 
lation to the meaning, purpose, and character of the book itself. 
It is now said to be the work of one author — now of two, three, 
four, five — as far even as nine or ten. These writers are sometimes 
thought to have composed the Doctor conjointly — sometimes to 
have written each a portion. These individual portions have 
even been pointed out by the supremely acute, ajid the names of 
their respective fathers assigned. Supposed discrepancies of taste 
and manner, together with the prodigal introduction of mottoes, 
and other scraps of erudition (apparently beyond the compass of 
a single individual's reading) have given rise to this idea of a 



Vol. III.— 24 



554 MARGINALIA. 



multiplicity of writers — among whom are mentioned in turn all 
the most witty, all the most eccentric, and especially all the most 
learned of Great Britain. Again — in regard to the nature of the 
book. It has been called an imitation of Sterne — an august and 
most profound exemplification, under the garb of eccentricity, of 
some all-important moral law — a true, under guise of a fictitious, 
biography — a simple jeu d'esprit — a mad farrago by a Bedlamite, 
and a great multiplicity of other equally fine names and hard. 
Undoubtedly, the best method of arriving at a decision in relation 
to a work of this nature, is to read it through with attention, and 
thus see what can be made of it. We have done so, and can 
make nothing of it, and are therefore clearly of opinion that the 
Doctor is precisely — nothing. We mean to say that it is nothing 
better than a hoax. 

That any serious truth is meant to be inculcated by a tissue 
of bizarre and disjointed rhapsodies, whose general meaning no 
person can fathom, is a notion altogether untenable, unless we 
suppose the author a madman. But there are none of the proper 
evidences of madness in the book — while of mere banter there are 
instances innumerable. One half, at least, of the entire publica- 
tion is taken up with palpable quizzes, reasonings in a circle, sen- 
tences, like the nonsense verses of Du Bartas, evidently framed to 
mean nothing, while wearing an air of profound thought, and 
grotesque speculations in regard to the probable excitement to be 
created by the book. 

It appears to have been written with a sole view (or nearly 
with the sole view) of exciting inquiry and comment. That this 
object should be fully accomplished cannot be thought very won- 
derful, when we consider the excessive trouble taken to accomplish 
it, by vivid and powerful intellect. That the Doctor is the off- 
spring of such intellect, is proved sufficiently by many passages 
of the book, where the writer appears to have been led off from 
his main design. That it is written by more than one man should 
not be deduced either from the apparent immensity of its erudi- 
tion, or from discrepancies of style. That man is a desperate 
mannerist who cannot vary his style ad infinitum ; and although 
the book may have been written by a number of learned biblio- 
phagi, still there is, we think, nothing to be found in the book 



MARGINALIA. 655 



itself at variance with the possibility of its being written by any 
one individual of even mediocre reading. Erudition is only cer- 
tainly known in its total results. The mere grouping together of 
mottoes from the greatest multiplicity of the rarest works, or 
even the apparently natural inweaving into any composition, of 
the sentiments and manner of these works, are attainments within 
the reach of any well-informed, ingenious and industrious man 
having access to the great libraries of London. Moreover, while 
a single individual possessing these requisites and opportunities, 
might, through a rabid desire of creating a sensation, have writ- 
ten, with some trouble, the Doctor, it is by no means easy to 
imagine that a plurality of sensible persons could be found willing 
to embark in such absurdity from a similar, or indeed from any 
imaginable inducement. 

The present edition of the Harpers consists of two volumes in 
one. Volume one commences with a Prelude of Mottoes occu- 
pying two pages. Then follows a Postscript — then a Table of 
Contents to the first volume, occupying eighteen pages. Volume 
two has a similar Prelude of Mottoes and Table of Contents. 
The whole is subdivided into Chapters Ante-Initial, Initial, and 
Post-Initial, with Inter-Chapters. The pages have now and then a 
typographical queerity — a monogram, a scrap of grotesque music, 
old English, &c. Some characters of this latter kind are printed 
with colored ink in the British edition, which is gotten up with 
great care. All these oddities are in the manner of Sterne, and 
some of them are exceedingly well conceived. The work pro- 
fesses to be a Life of one Doctor Daniel Dove and his horse Nobs — 
but we should put no very great faith in this biography. On the 
back of the book is a monogram — which appears again once or 
twice in the text, and whose solution is a fertile source of trouble 
with all readers. This monogram is a triangular pyramid ; and 
as, in geometry, the solidity of every polyedral body may be 
computed by dividing the body into pyramids, the pyramid is 
thus considered as the base or essence of every polyedron. The 
author then, after his own fashion, may mean to imply that his 
book is the basis of all solidity or wisdom — or perhaps, since the 
polyedron is not only a solid, but a solid terminated by plane 
faces, that the Doctor is the very essence of all that spurious 



556 MARGINALIA. 



wisdom which will terminate in just nothing at all — in a hoax, 
and a consequent multiplicity of blank visages. The wit and hu- 
mor of the Doctor have seldom been equalled. We cannot think 
Southey wrote it, but have no idea who did. 

CLX. 

These twelve Letters* are occupied, in part, with minute details 
of such atrocities on the part of the British, during their sojourn 
in Charleston, as the quizzing of Mrs. Wilkinson and the pilfer- 
ing of her shoe-buckles — the remainder being made up of the in- 
dignant comments of Mrs. Wilkinson herself. 

It is very true, as the Preface assures us, that " few records 
exist of American women either before or during the war of the 
Revolution, and that those perpetuated by History want the charm 
of personal narration," — but then we are well delivered from such 
charms of personal narration as we find here. The only supposa- 
ble merit in the compilation is that dogged air of truth with which 
the fair authoress relates the lamentable story of her misadven- 
tures. I look in vain for that " useful information" about which 
I have heard — unless, indeed, it is in the passage where we are 
told that the letter-writer " was a young and beautiful widow ; 
that her hand- writing is clear and feminine ; and that the letters 
were copied by herself into a blank quarto book, on which the 
extravagant sale-price marks one of the features of the times :" — 
there are other extravagant sale-prices, however, besides that ; — it 
was seventy-five cents that I paid for these " Letters." Besides, 
they are silly, and I cannot conceive why Mrs. Gilman thought the 
public wished to read them. It is really too bad for her to talk 
at a body, in this style, about " gathering relics of past history," 
and " floating down streams of time." 

As for Mrs. Wilkinson, I am rejoiced that she lost her shoe- 
buckles. 

CLX. 

Advancing briskly with a rapier, he did the business for him at a blow. — 
Smollett 

This vulgar colloquialism had its type among the Romans, 
Et ferro subitus grassatus, agit rem. — Juvenal. 

* " Letters of Eliza Wilkinson, during the invasion and possession of 
Charleston, S. C, by the British, in the Revolutionary War." Arranged by 
Caroline Gilman. 



MARGINALIA. 557 



CLXI 
It cannot, we think, be a matter of doubt with any reflecting 
mind, that at least one-third of the reverence, or of the affection, 
with which we regard the elder poets of Great Britain, should be 
credited to what is, in itself, a thing apart from poetry — we mean 
to the simple love of the antique— and that again a third of even 
the proper poetic sentiment inspired by these writings should be 
ascribed to a fact which, while it has a strict connexion with 
poetry in the abstract, and also with the particular poems in 
question, must not be looked upon as a merit appertaining to the 
writers of the poems. Almost every devout reader of the old 
English bards, if demanded his opinion of their productions, 
would mention vaguely, yet with perfect sincerity, a sense of 
dreamy, wild, indefinite, and, he would perhaps say, undefinable 
delight. Upon being required to point out the source of this so 
shadowy pleasure, he would be apt to speak of the quaint in 
phraseology and of the grotesque in rhythm. And this quaint- 
ness and grotesqueness are, as .we have elsewhere endeavored to 
show, very powerful, and, if well managed, very admissible ad- 
juncts to ideality. But in the present instance they arise inde- 
pendently of the author's will, and are matters altogether apart 

from his intention. 

CLXII. 

As to this last term (" high-binder") which is so confidently 
quoted as modern ("not in use, certainly, before 1819,") I can 
refute all that is said by referring to a journal in my own posses- 
sion— " The Weekly Inspector," for Dec. 27, 1806— published in 
New York : 

On Christmas Eve, a party of banditti, amounting, it is stated, to forty or 
fifty members of an association, calling themselves " High-Binders" assem- 
bled in front of St. Peter's Church, in Barclay -street, expecting that the Cath- 
olic ritual would be performed with a degree of pomp and splendor which has 
usually been omitted in this city. These ceremonies, however, not taking 
place, the High-Binders manifested great displeasure. 

In a subsequent number, the association are called " Hide- 
Binders." They were Irish. 

CLXIII. 

Perhaps Mr. Barrow* is right after all, and the dearth of genius 
in America is owing to the continual teasing of the musquitoes. 
* " Voyage to Cochin- China." 



558 MARGINALIA. 



CLXIV. 
The title of this book* deceives us. It is by no means " talk'' 
as men understand it — not that true talk of which Boswell has 
been the best historiographer. In a word it is not gossip, which 
has been never better denned than by Basil, who calls it " talk for 
talk's sake," nor more thoroughly comprehended than by Horace 
Walpole and Mary Wortley Montague, who made it a profession 
and a purpose. Embracing all things, it has neither beginning, 
middle, nor end. Thus of the gossipper it was not properly said 
that "he commences his discourse by jumping in medias res." 
For, clearly, your gossipper commences not at all. He is begun. 
He is already begun. He is always begun. In the matter of 
end he is indeterminate. And by these extremes shall ye know 
him to be of the Csesars — porphyrogenitus — of the right vein — 
of the true blood — of the blue blood — of the sangre azula. As 
for laws, he is cognizant of but one, the invariable absence of all. 
And for his road, were it as straight as the Appia and as broad as 
that " which leadeth to destruction," nevertheless would he be 
malcontent without a frequent hop-skip-and-jump, over the hedges, 
into the tempting pastures of digression beyond. Such is the 
gossipper, and of such alone is the true talk. But when Cole- 
ridge asked Lamb if he had ever heard him preach, the answer 
was quite happy — " I have never heard you do anything else." 
The truth is that "Table Discourse" might have answered as a 
title to this book ; but its character can be fully conveyed only in 
" Post-Prandian Sub-Sermons," or " Three Bottle Sermonoids." 

CLXV. 

A rather bold and quite unnecessary plagiarism — from a book 

too well known to promise impunity. 

It is now full time to begin to brush away the insects of literature, whether 
creeping or fluttering, which have too long crawled over and soiled the intel- 
lectual ground of this country. It is high time to shake the little sickly stems 
of many a puny plant, and make its fading flowerets fall. — Monthly Regis- 
ter^. 243, Vol. '2, New York, 1807. 

On the other hand — 

I have brushed away the insects of literature, whether fluttering or creep- 
ing ; I have shaken the little stems of many a puny plant, and the flowerets 
have fallen. — Preface to the Pursuits of Literature. 

* " Coleridge's Table-Talk." 



MARGINALIA. 659 



CLXVI. 

Men of genius are far more abundant than is supposed. In 
fact, to appreciate thoroughly the work of what we call genius, is 
to possess all the genius by which the work was produced. But 
the person appreciating may be utterly incompetent to reproduce 
the work, or anything similar, and this solely through lack of 
what may be termed the constructive ability — a matter quite in- 
dependent of what we agree to understand in the term " genius " 
itself. This ability is based, to be sure, in great part, upon the 
faculty of analysis, enabling the artist to get full view of the 
machinery of his proposed effect, and thus work it and regulate it 
at will ; but a great deal depends also upon properties strictly 
moral — for example, upon patience, upon concentrativeness, or the 
power of holding the attention steadily to the one purpose, upon 
self-dependence and contempt for all opinion which is opinion and 
no more — in especial, upon energy or industry. So vitally im- 
portant is this last, that it may well be doubted if anything to 
which we have been accustomed to give the title of a " work 
of genius" was ever accomplished without it; and it is chiefly 
because this quality and genius are nearly incompatible, that 
" works of genius " are few, while mere men of genius are, as I 
say, abundant. The Romans, who excelled us in acuteness of 
observation, while falling below us in induction from facts observ- 
ed, seem to have been so fully aware of the inseparable connexion 
between industry and a " work of genius," as to have adopted 
the error that industry, in great measure, was genius itself. The 
highest compliment is intended by a Roman, when, of an epic, or 
anything similar, he says that it is written industria mirabili or 
incredibili industria. 

CLXVIL 

The merely mechanical style of "Athens" is far better than 
that of any of Bulvver's previous books. In general he is atro- 
ciously involute — this is his main defect. He wraps one sentence 
in another ad infinitum — very much in the fashion of those " nests 
of boxes" sold in our wooden ware-shops, or like the islands 
within lakes, within islands within lakes, within islands within 
lakes, of which we read so much in the " Periplus" of Hanno. 



560 MARGINALIA. 



CLXVIII. 

All true men must rejoice to perceive the decline of the miser- 
able rant and cant against originality, which was so much in 
vogue a few years ago among a class of microscopical critics, and 
which at one period threatened to degrade all American literature 
to the level of Flemish art. 

Of puns it has been said that those most dislike who are least 
able to utter them ; but with far more of truth may it be asserted 
that invectives against originality proceed only from persons at 
once hypocritical and commonplace. I say hypocritical — for the 
love of novelty is an indisputable element of the moral nature of 
man ; and since to be original is merely to be novel, the dolt who 
professes a distaste for originality, in letters or elsewhere, proves 
in no degree his aversion for the thing in itself, but merely that 
uncomfortable hatred which ever arises in the heart of an envious 
man for an excellence he cannot hope to attain. 

CLXIX. 

When I call to mind the preposterous " asides " and soliloquies 
of the drama among civilized nations, the shifts employed by the 
Chinese playwrights appear altogether respectable. If a general, 
on a Pekin or Canton stage, is ordered on an expedition, " he 
brandishes a whip," says Davis, " or takes in his hand the reins 
of a bridle, and striding three or four times around a platform, in 
the midst of a tremendous crash of gongs, drums, and trumpets, 
finally stops short and tells the audience where he has arrived.'' 
It would sometimes puzzle an European stage hero in no little 
degree to " tell an audience where he has arrived." Most of 
them seem to have a very imperfect conception of their where- 
abouts. In the " Mort de Caesar," for example, Voltaire makes 
his populace rush to and fro, exclaiming, " Courons au Capitole /" 
Poor fellows — they are in the capitol all the time ; — in his scru- 
ples about unity of place, the author has never once let them out 
of it. 

CLXX. 

Sallust, too. He had much the same free-and-easy idea, and 
Metternich himself could not have quarrelled with his " Impune 
quoe libet facele, id est esse regem" 



MARGINALIA. 561 



CLXXI. 

A ballad entitled " Indian Serenade" and put into the mouth 
of the hero, Vasco Nunez, is, perhaps, the most really meritorious 
portion of Mr. Simms' " Damsel of Darien." This stanza is full 

of music : 

And their wild and mellow voices 

Still to hear along the deep, 
Every brooding star rejoices, 

While the billow, on its pillow, 
Lulled to silence seems to sleep. 
And also this : 

• 'Tis the wail for life they waken 
By Samana's yielding shore — 
With the tempest it is shaken ; 
The wild ocean is in motion, 
And the song is heard no more. 

CLXXII. 
Here is a man who is a scholar and an artist, who knows precisely how 
every effect has been produced by every great writer, and who is resolved to 
reproduce them. But the heart passes by his pitfalls and traps, and care- 
fully-planned springes, to be taken captive by some simple fellow who ex- 
pected the event as little as did his prisoner.* 

Perhaps I err in quoting these words as the author's own — 
they are in the mouth of one of his interlocutors — but whoever 
claims them, they are poetical and no more. The error is exactly 
that common one of separating practice from the theory which 
includes it. In all cases, if the practice fail, it is because the 
theory is imperfect. If Mr. Lowell's heart be not caught in the 
pitfall or trap, then the pitfall is ill-concealed and the trap is not 
properly baited or set. One who has some artistical ability may 
know how to do a thing, and even show how to do it, and yet 
fail in doing it after all ; but the artist and the man of some 
artistic ability must not be confounded. He only is the former 
who can carry his most shadowy precepts into successful applica- 
tion. To say that a critic could not have written the work which 
he criticises, is to put forth a contradiction in terms. 

CLXXIII. 

Talking of conundrums : — Why will a geologist put no faith 
in the fable of the fox that lost his tail ? Because he knows 
that no animal remains have ever been found in trap. 

* Lowell's " Conversations." 
24* 



562 MARGINALIA. 



CLXXIV. 
We have long learned to reverence the fine intellect of Bul- 
wer. We take up any production of his pen with a positive 
certainty that, in reading it, the wildest passions of our nature, 
the most profound of our thoughts, the brightest visions of our 
fancy, and the most ennobling and lofty of our aspirations will, in 
due turn, be enkindled within us. We feel sure of rising from 
the perusal a wiser if not a better man. In no instance are we 
deceived. From the brief tale — from the " Monos and Daimonos" 
of the author — to his most ponderous and labored novels — all is 
richly, and glowingly intellectual — all is energetic, or astute, or 
brilliant, or profound. There may be men now living who pos- 
sess the power of Bulwer — but it is quite evident that very few 
have made that power so palpably manifest. Indeed we know of 
none. Viewing him as a novelist — a point of view exceedingly 
unfavorable (if we hold to the common acceptation of "the 
novel") for a proper contemplation of his genius — he is unsur- 
passed by any writer living or dead. W T hy should we hesitate to 
say this, feeling, as we do, thoroughly persuaded of its truth. 
Scott has excelled him in many points, and " The Bride of Lain- 
mormuir" is a better book than any individual work by the 
author of Pelham — "Ivanhoe" is, perhaps, equal to any. De- 
scending to particulars, D'Israeli has a more brilliant, a more 
lofty, and a more delicate (we do not say a wilder) imagination. 
Lady Dacre has written Ellen Wareham, a more forcible tale of 
passion. In some species of wit Theodore Hook rivals, and in 
broad humor our own Paulding surpasses him. The writer of 
"Godolphin" equals him in energy. Banim is a better sketcher 
of character. Hope is a richer colorist. Captain Trelawney is as 
original — Moore is as fanciful, and Horace Smith is as learned. 
But who is there uniting in one person the imagination, the pas- 
sion, the humor, the energy, the knowledge of the heart, the ar- 
tist-like eye, the originality, the fancy, and the learning of Edward 
Lytton Bulwer ? In a vivid wit — in profundity and a Gothic 
massiveness of thought — in style — in a calm certainty and defini- 
tiveness of purpose — in industry — and above all, in the power of 
controlling and regulating by volition his illimitable faculties of 
mind, he is unequalled — he is unapproached. 



MARGINALIA. 563 



CLXXV. 

The author of "Richelieu" and "Darnley" is lauded, by a 
great majority of those who laud him, from mere motives of duty, 
not of inclination — duty erroneously conceived. He is looked 
upon as the head and representative of those novelists who, in 
historical romance, attempt to blend interest with instruction. His 
sentiments are found to be pure — his morals unquestionable, and 
pointedly shown forth — his language indisputably correct. And 
for all this, praise, assuredly, but then only a certain degree of 
praise, should be awarded him. To be pure in his expressed 
opinions is a duty; and were his language as correct as any 
spoken, he would speak only as every gentleman should speak. 
In regard to his historical information, were it much more accu- 
rate, and twice as extensive as, from any visible indications, we 
have reason to believe it, it should still be remembered that simi- 
lar attainments are possessed by many thousands of well-educated 
men of all countries, who look upon their knowledge with no 
more than ordinary complacency ; and that a far, very far higher 
reach of erudition is within the grasp of any general reader 
having access to the great libraries of Paris or the Vatican. Some- 
thing more than we have mentioned is necessary to place our au- 
thor upon a level with the best of the English novelists — for here 
his admirers would desire us to place him. Had Sir Walter 
Scott never existed, and Waverley never been written, we would 
not, of course, award Mr. J. the merit of being the first to blend 
history, even successfully, with fiction. But as an indifferent imi- 
tator of the Scotch novelist in this respect, it is unnecessary to 
speak of the author of "Richelieu" any farther. To genius of 
any kind, it seems to us, that he has little pretension. In the 
solemn tranquillity of his pages we seldom stumble across a novel 
emotion, and if any matter of deep interest arises in the path, we 
are pretty sure to find it an interest appertaining to some his- 
torical fact equally vivid or more so in the original chronicles. 
CLXXVI. 

Jack Birkenhead, apud Bishop Sprat, says that " a great wit's 
great work is to refuse." The apophthegm must be swallowed 
cum grano salis. His greatest work is to originate no matter 
that shall require refusal. 



564 MARGINALIA. 



CLXXVII. 

" Frequently since iris recent death," says the American editor 
of Hood, " lie has been called a great author — a phrase used not 
inconsiderately or in vain." Yet, if we adopt the conventional 
idea of " a great author," there has lived, perhaps, no writer of 
the last half century who, with equal notoriety, was less entitled 
than Hood to be so called. In fact, he was a literary merchant, 
whose main stock in trade was littleness ; for, during the larger 
portion of his life, he seemed to breathe only for the purpose of 
perpetrating puns — things of so despicable a platitude that the 
man who is capable of habitually committing them, is seldom 
found capable of anything else. Whatever merit may be dis- 
covered in a pun, arises altogether from unexpectedness. This is 
the pun's element and is two-fold. First, we demand that the 
combination of the pun be unexpected ; and, secondly, we require 
the most entire unexpectedness in the pun per se. A rare pun, 
rarely appearing, is, to a certain extent, a pleasurable effect ; but 
to no mind, however debased in taste, is a continuous effort at 
punning otherwise than unendurable. The man who maintains 
that he derives gratification from any such chapters of punnage 
as Hood was in the daily practice of committing to paper, should 
not be credited upon oath. 

The puns of the author of "Fair Inez," however, are to be re- 
garded as the weak points of the man. Independently of their 
ill effect, in a literary view, as mere puns, they leave upon us a 
painful impression ; for too evidently they are the hypochondriac's 
struggles at mirth — the grinnings of the death's head. No one 
can read his " Literary Reminiscences " without being convinced 
of his habitual despondency : — and the species of false wit in 
question is precisely of that character which would be adopted 
by an author of Hood's temperament and cast of intellect, when 
compelled to write at an emergency. That his heart had no in- 
terest in these niaiseries, is clear. I allude, of course, to his mere 
puns for the pun's sake — a class of letters by which he attained 
his widest renown. That he did more in this way than in any 
other, is but a corollary from what I have already said, for, gen- 
erally, he was unhappy, and almost continually he wrote invito, 
Minerva. But his true province was a very rare and etherenl hu- 



MARGINALIA. 565 



mor, in which the mere pun was left out of sight, or took the 
character of the richest grotesquerie ; impressing the imaginative 
reader with remarkable force, as if by a new phase of the ideal. 
It is in this species of brilliant, or, rather, glowing grotesquerie, 
uttered with a rushing abandon vastly heightening its effect, that 
Hood's marked originality mainly consisted : — and it is this which 
entitles him, at times, to the epithet " great :" — for that unde- 
niably may be considered great (of whatever seeming littleness in 
itself) which is capable of inducing intense emotion in the minds 
or hearts of those who are themselves undeniably great. 

The field in which Hood is distinctive is a border-land between 
Fancy and Fantasy. In this region he reigns supreme. Never- 
theless, he has made successful and frequent incursions, although 
vacillatingly, into the domain of the true Imagination. I mean 
to say that he is never truly or purely imaginative for more than 
a paragraph at a time. In a word, his peculiar genius was the 
result of vivid Fancy impelled by Hypochondriasis. 
CLXXVIII. 

There is an old German chronicle about Reynard the Fox, 
when crossed in love — about how he desired to turn hermit, but 
could find no spot in which he could be "thoroughly alone," 
until he came upon the desolate fortress of Malspart. He should 
have taken to reading the "American Drama " of "Witchcraft." I 
fancy he would have found himself "thoroughly alone" in that. 

CLXXIX. 

Since it has become fashionable to trundle houses about the 
streets, should there not be some remodelling of the legal defini- 
tion of reality, as "that which is permanent, fixed, and immovea- 
ble, that cannot be carried out of its place ?" According to this, 
a house is by no means real estate. 

CLXXX. 

The enormous multiplication of books in every branch of know- 
ledge, is one of the greatest evils of this age; since it presents 
one of the most serious obstacles to the acquisition of correct in- 
formation, by throwing in the reader's way piles of lumber, in 
which he must painfully grope for the scraps of useful matter, 
peradventure interspersed. 



666 MARGINALIA. 



CLXXXI. 
That Professor Wilson is one of the most gifted and altogether 
one of the most remarkable men of his day, few persons will be 
weak enough to deny. His ideality — his enthusiastic apprecia- 
tion of the beautiful, conjoined with a temperament compelling 
him into action and expression, has been the root of his preemi- 
nent success. Much of it, undoubtedly, must be referred to that 
so-called moral courage which is but the consequence of the tem- 
perament in its physical elements. In a word, Professor Wilson 
is what he is, because he possesses ideality, energy and audacity, 
each in a very unusual degree. The first, almost unaided by the 
two latter, has enabled him to produce much impression, as a 
poet, upon the secondary or tertiary grades of the poetic compre- 
hension. His " Isle of Palms " appeals effectively to all those 
poetic intellects in which the poetic predominates greatly over 
the intellectual element. It is a composition which delights 
through the glow of its imagination, but which repels (compara- 
tively, of course) through the niaiseries of its general conduct 
and construction. As a critic, Professor Wilson has derived, as 
might easily be supposed, the greatest aid from the qualities for 
which we have given him credit — and it is in criticism especially, 
that it becomes very difficult to say which of these qualities has 
assisted him the most. It is sheer audacity, however, to which, 
perhaps, after all, he is the most particularly indebted. How 
little he owes to intellectual nreeminence, and how much to the 
mere overbearing impetuosity of his opinions, would be a singular 
subject for speculation. Nevertheless it is true, that this rash 
spirit of domination would have served, without his rich ideality, 
but to hurry him into contempt. Be this as it may, in the first 
requisite of a critic the Scotch Aristarchus is grossly deficient. 
Of one who instructs we demand, in the first instance, a certain 
knowledge of the principles which regulate the instruction. Pro- 
fessor Wilson's capability is limited to a keen appreciation of the 
beautiful, and fastidious sense of the deformed. Why or how 
either is either, he never dreams of pretending to inquire, because 
he sees clearly his own inability to comprehend. He is no ana- 
lyst. He is ignorant of the machinery of his own thoughts and 
the thoughts of other men. His criticism is emphatically on the 



MARGINALIA. 567 



surface — superficial. His opinions are mere dicta — unsupported 
verba magistri — and are just or unjust at the variable taste of 
the individual who reads them. He persuades — he bewilders — 
he overwhelms — at times he even argues — but there has been no 
period at which he ever demonstrated anything beyond his own 
utter incapacity for demonstration. 

CLXXXII. 

One of the most singular styles in the world — certainly one of 
the most loose — is that of the elder D'Israeli. For example, he 
thus begins his Chapter on Bibliomania : " The preceding arti- 
cle [that on Libraries] is honorable to literature." Here no self- 
praise is intended. The writer means to say merely that the facts 
narrated in the preceding article are honorable, etc. Three-fourths 
of his sentences are constructed in a similar manner. The blun- 
ders evidently arise, however, from the author's pre-occupation 
with his subject. His thought, or rather matter, outruns his pen, 
and drives him upon condensation at the expense of luminous- 
ness. The manner of D'Israeli has many of the traits of Gibbon 
— although little of the latter 's precision. 

CLXXXIII. 
Words — printed ones especially — are murderous things. Keats 
did (or did not) die of a criticism, Cromwell of Titus's pamphlet 
" Killing no Murder," and Montfleury perished of the " Andro- 
mache." The author of the " Parnasse Reforme " makes him 
thus speak in Hades — " Uhomme done qui voudrait savoir ce dont 
je suis mort qu'il ne demande pas s'il fut de fievre ou de podagre 
ou d? autre chose, mais quil entende que ce fut de IS Andromache." 
As for myself, I am fast dying of the " Sartor Resartus." 

CLXXXIV. 

Captain Hall is one of the most agreeable of writers. We like 
him for the same reason that we like a good drawing-room con- 
versationist — there is such a pleasure in listening to his elegant 
nothings. Not that the captain is unable to be profound. He 
has, on the contrary, some reputation for science. But in his 
hands even the most trifling personal adventures become inter- 
esting from the very piquancy with which they are told. 



568 MARGINALIA. 



CLXXXV. 
How truthful an air of deep lamentation hangs here* upon 
every gentle syllable ! It pervades all. It comes over the sweet 
melody of the words, over the gentleness and grace which we 
fancy in the little maiden herself, even over the half-playful, half- 
petulant air with which she lingers on the beauties and good 
qualities of her favorite — like the cool shadow of a summer cloud 
over a bed of lilies and violets, and " all sweet flowers." The 
whole thing is redolent with poetry of the very loftiest order. It 
is positively crowded with nature and with pathos. Every line is 
an idea — conveying either the beauty and playfulness of the 
fawn, or the artlessness of the maiden, or the love of the maiden, 
or her admiration, or her grief, or the fragrance, and sweet warmth, 
and perfect appropriateness of the little nest-like bed of lilies and 
roses, which the fawn devoured as it lay upon them, and could 
scarcely be distinguished from them by the once happy little 
damsel who went to seek her pet with an arch and rosy smile 
upon her face. Consider the great variety of truth and delicate 
thought in the few lines we have quoted — the wonder of the 
maiden at the fleetness of her favorite — the "little silver feet " — 
the fawn challenging his mistress to the race, " with a pretty skip- 
ping grace," running on before, and then, with head turned back, 
awaiting her approach only to fly from it again — can we not dis- 
tinctly perceive all these things ? The exceeding vigor, too, and 
beauty of the line, 

And trod as if on the four winds. 

which are vividly apparent when we regard the artless nature of 

the speaker, and the four feet of the favorite — one for each wind. 

Then the garden of " my own" so overgrown — entangled — with 

lilies and roses as to be " a little wilderness " — the fawn loving to 

be there and there " only " — the maiden seeking it " where it 

should lie," and not being able to distinguish it from the flowers 

until " itself would rise " — the lying among the lilies " like a bank 

of lilies " — the loving to "fill " itself with roses, 

And its pure virgin limbs to fold 
In whitest sheets of lilies cold, 

and these things being its "chief" delights — and then the pre- 
* The Maiden Hunting for her Fawn, by Andrew Marvell. 



MARGINALIA. 569 



eminent beauty and naturalness of the concluding lines — whose 
very outrageous hyperbole and absurdity only render them the 
more true to nature and to propriety, when we consider the inno- 
cence, the artlessness, the enthusiasm, the passionate grief, and 
more passionate admiration of the bereaved child. 

Had it lived long it would have been 

Lilies without — roses within. 
i 

CLXXXVI. 

We are not among those who regard the genius of Petrarch as 
a subject for enthusiastic admiration. The characteristics of his 
poetry are not traits of the highest, or even of a high order ; and 
in accounting for his fame, the discriminating critic will look 
rather to the circumstances which surrounded the man, than to 
the literary merits of the pertinacious sonnetteer. Grace and 
tenderness we grant him — but these qualities are surely insufficient 
to establish his poetical apotheosis. 

In other fespects he is entitled to high consideration. As a 
patriot, notwithstanding some accusations which have been rather 
urged than established, we can only regard him with approval. 
In his republican principles ; in his support of Rienzi at the risk 
of the displeasure of the Colonna family ; in his whole political 
conduct, in short, he seems to have been nobly and disinterestedly 
zealous for the welfare of his country. But Petrarch is most im- 
portant when we look upon him as the bridge by which, over the 
dark gulf of the middle ages, the knowledge of the old world 
made its passage into the new. His influence on what is termed 
the revival of letters was, perhaps, greater than that of any man 
who ever lived ; certainly far greater than that of any of his im- 
mediate contemporaries. His ardent zeal in recovering and 
transcribing the lost treasures of antique lore cannot be too highly 
appreciated. But for him, many of our most valued classics 
might have been numbered with Pindar's hymns and dithyrambics. 
He devoted days and nights to this labor of love ; snatching 
numerous precious books from the very brink of oblivion. His 
judgment in these things was strikingly correct, while his erudition, 
for the age in which he lived, and for the opportunities he enjoyed, 
has always been a subject of surprise. 



570 MARGINALIA. 



CLXXXVII. 
One of the most singular pieces of literary Mosaic is Mr. Long- 
fellow's " Midnight Mass for the Dying Year." The general idea 
and manner are from Tennyson's " Death of the Old Year," sev- 
eral of the most prominent points are from the death scene of 
Cordelia in " Lear," and the line about the " hooded friars " is 
from the " Comus " of Milton. Some approach to this patchwork 
may be found in these lines from Tasso — 

Giace l'alta Cartago : a pena i segni 

De l'alte sui ruine il lido serba : 

Muoino le citta, muoino i regni ; 

Copre i fasti e le pompe arena et herba : 

E lliuoni d'esser mortal per che si sdegni. 

This is entirely made up from Lucan and Sulspicius. The for- 
mer says of Troy — 

lam tota teguntur 
Pergama dumetis : etiam perire ruince. 

Sulspicius, in a letter to Cicero, says of Megara, Egina and Co- 
rinth — " Hem ! nos homunculi indignamur si quis nostrum in- 
teriit, quorum vita brevior esse debet, cum uno loco tot oppidorum 

cadavera projecta jaceant" 

CLXXXVIII. • 
The ordinary pickpocket filches a purse, and the matter is at 
an end. He neither takes honor to himself, openly, on the score 
of the purloined purse, nor does he subject the individual robbed 
to the charge of pick-pocketism in his own person ; by so much 
the less odious is he, then, than the filcher of literary property. 
It is impossible, we should think, to imagine a more sickening 
spectacle than that of the plagiarist, who walks among mankind 
with an erecter step, and who feels his heart beat with a prouder 
impulse, on account of plaudits which he is conscious are the due 
of another. It is the purity, the nobility, the -ethereality of just 
fame — it is the contrast between this ethereality and the grossness 
of the crime of theft, which places the sin of plagiarism in so de- 
testable a light. We are horror-stricken to find existing in the 
same bosom the soul-uplifting thirst for fame, and the debasing 
propensity to pilfer. It is the anomaly — the discord — which so 

grossly offends. 

CLXXXIX. 
Voltaire, in his preface to " Brutus," actually boasts of having 
introduced the Roman Senate on the stage in red mantles. 



MARGINALIA. 571 



CXC. 

" Les anges^ says Madame Dudevant, a woman who inter- 
sperses many an admirable sentiment amid a chaos of the most 
shameless and altogether objectionable fiction — " Les anges ne 
sont plus pures que le coeur d'unjeune homme qui aime en verite" 
The angels are not more pure than the heart of a young man who 
loves with fervor. The hyperbole is scarcely less than true. It 
would be truth itself, were it averred of the love of him who is 
at the same time young and a poet. The boyish poet-love is 
indisputably that one of the human sentiments which most nearly 
realizes our dreams of the chastened voluptuousness of heaven. 

In every allusion made by the author of " Childe Harold " to 
his passion for Mary Chaworth, there runs a vein of almost 
spiritual tenderness and purity, strongly in contrast with the gross 
earthliness pervading and disfiguring his ordinary love-poems. 
The Dream, in which the incidents of his parting with her when 
about to travel, are said to be delineated, or at least parralleled, 
has never been excelled (certainly never excelled by him) in the 
blended fervor, delicacy, truthfulness and ethereality which subli- 
mate and adorn it. For this reason, it may well be doubted if 
he has written anything so universally popular. That his attach- 
ment for this " Mary " (in whose very name there indeed seemed 
to exist for him an " enchantment ") was earnest, and long- 
abiding, we have every reason to believe. There are a hundred 
evidences of this fact, scattered not only through his own poems 
and letters, but in the memoirs of his relatives, and cotemporaries 
in general. But that it was thus earnest and enduring, does not 
controvert, in any degree, the opinion that it was a passion (if 
passion it can properly be termed) of the most thoroughly roman- 
tic, shadowy and imaginative character. It was born of the hour, 
and of the youthful necessity to love, while it was nurtured by 
the waters and the hills, and the flowers, and the stars. It had 
no peculiar regard to the person, or to the character, or to the 
reciprocating affection of Mary Chaworth. Any maiden, not imme- 
diately and positively repulsive, he would have loved, under the same 
circumstances of hourly and unrestricted communion, such as the 
engravings of the subject shadow forth. They met without restraint 
and without reserve. As mere children they sported together ; 



572 MARGINALIA. 



in boyhood and girlhood they read from the same books, sang the 
same songs, or roamed hand in hand, through the grounds of 
the conjoining estates. The result was not merely natural or 
merely probable, it was as inevitable as destiny itself. 

In view of a passion thus engendered, Miss Chaworth, (who is 
represented as possessed of no little personal beauty and some 
accomplishments,) could not have failed to serve sufficiently well 
as the incarnation of the ideal that haunted the fancy of the 
poet. It is perhaps better, nevertheless, for the mere romance 
of the love-passages between the two, that their intercourse was 
broken up in early life and never uninterruptedly resumed in after 
years. Whatever of warmth, whatever of soul-passion, whatever 
of the truer nare and essentiality of romance was elicited during 
the youthful association is to be attributed altogether to the poet. 
If she felt at all, it was only while the magnetism of his actual 
presence compelled her to feel. If she responded at all, it was 
merely because the necromancy of his words of fire could not 
do otherwise than exhort a response. In absence, the bard bore 
easily with him all the fancies which were the basis of his flame 
— a flame which absence itself but served to keep in vigor — while 
the less ideal but at the same time the less really substantial 
affection of his lady-love, perished utterly and forthwith, through 
simple lack of the element which had fanned it into being. He 
to her, in brief, was a not unhandsome, and not ignoble, but some- 
what portionless, somewhat eccentric and rather lame young man. 
She to him was the Egeria of his dreams — the Venus Aphrodite 
that sprang, in full and supernal loveliness, from the bright foam 
upon the storm-tormented ocean of his thoughts. 

CXCI. 

Mill says that he has " demonstrated " his propositions. Just 
in the same way Anaxagoras demonstrated snow to be black, 
(which, perhaps, it is, if we could see the thing in the proper 
light,) and just in the same w T ay the French advocate, Linguet, 
with Hippocrates in his hand, demonstrated bread to be a slow 
poison. The worst of the matter is, that propositions such as 
these seldom stay demonstrated long enough to be thoroughly un- 
derstood. 



MARGINALIA. 678 



CXCII. 

We have read Mr. Paulding's Life of Washington with a 
degree of interest seldom excited in us by the perusal of any- 
book whatever. We are convinced by a deliberate examination 
of the design, manner, and rich material of the work, that, as it 
grows in age, it will grow in the estimation of our countrymen, 
and, finally, will not fail to take a deeper hold upon the public 
mind, and upon the public affections, than any work upon the 
same subject, or of a similar nature, which has been yet written 
— or, possibly, which may be written hereafter. Indeed, we can- 
not perceive the necessity of anything farther upon the great 
theme of Washington. Mr. Paulding has completely and most 
beautifully filled the vacuum which the works of Marshall and 
Sparks have left open. He has painted the boy, the man, the 
husband, and the christian. He has introduced us to the private- 
affections, aspirations, and charities of that hero whose affections 
of all affections were the most serene, whose aspirations the most 
God-like, and whose charities the most gentle and pure. He has 
taken us abroad with the patriot-farmer in his rambles about his 
homestead. He has seated us in his study and shown us the 
warrior-christian in unobtrusive communion with his God. He 
has done all this too, and more, in a simple and quiet manner, in 
a manner peculiarly his own, and which mainly because it is his 
own, cannot fail to be exceedingly effective. Yet it is very 
possible that the public may, for many years to come, overlook 
the rare merits of a work whose want of arrogant assumption 
is so little in keeping with the usages of the day, and whose 
striking simplicity and naivete of manner give, to a cursory ex- 
amination, so little evidence of the labor of composition. We 
have no fears, however, for the future. Such books as these 
before us, go down to posterity like rich wines, with a certainty of 
being more valued as they go. They force themselves with the 
gradual but rapidly. accumulating power of strong wedges into 
the hearts and understandings of a community. 

In regard to the style of Mr. Paulding's Washington, it would 
scarcely be doing it justice to speak of it merely as well adapted 
to its subject, and to its immediate design. Perhaps a rigorous 
examination would detect an occasional want of euphony, and 



574 MARGINALIA. 



some inaccuracies of syntatical arrangement. But nothing could 
be more out of place than any such examination in respect to a 
book whose forcible, rich, vivid, and comprehensive English might 
advantageously be held up, as a model for the young writers of 
the land. There is no better literary manner than the manner of 
Mr. Paulding. Certainly no American, and possibly no living 
writer of England, has more of those numerous peculiarities 
which go to the formation of a happy style. It is questionable," 
we think, whether any writer of any country combines as many 
of these peculiarities with as much of that essential negative 
virtue, the absence of affectation. We repeat, as our confident 
opinion, that it would be difficult, even with great care and labor, 
to improve upon the general manner of the volumes now before 
us, and that they contain many long individual passages of a 
force and beauty not to be surpassed by the finest passages of the 
finest writers in any time or country. It is this striking character 
in the Washington of Mr. Paulding — striking and peculiar indeed 
at a season when we are so culpably inattentive to all matters of 
this nature, as to mistake for style the fine airs at second hand of 
the silliest romancers — it is this character we say, which should 
insure the fulfilment of the writer's principal design, in the im- 
mediate introduction of his book into every respectable academy 
in the land. 

CXCIII. 

Scott, in his " Prespyterian Eloquence," speaks of " that ancient 
fable, not much known," in which a trial of skill in singing being 
agreed upon between the cuckoo and the nightingale, the ass was 
chosen umpire. When each bird had done his best, the umpire 
declared that the nightingale sang extremely well, but that " for 
a good plain song give him the cuckoo." The judge with the 
long ears, in this case, is a fine type of the tribe of critics who 
insist upon what they call " quietude " as the supreme literary 
excellence — gentlemen who rail at Tennyson and elevate Addison 
into apotheosis. By the way, the following passage from Sterne's 
" Letter from France," should be adopted at once as a motto by the 
" Down-East Review :" " As we rode along the valley, we saw a 
herd of asses on the top of one of the mountains. How they 
viewed and revieived us !" 



MARGINALIA. 575 



CXCIV. 
A hundred criticisms to the contrary notwithstanding, I must 
regard "The Lady of Lyons" as one of the most successful 
dramatic efforts of modern times. It is popular, and justly so. 
It could not fail to be popular so long as the people have a heart. 
It abounds in sentiments which stir the soul as the sound of a 
trumpet. It proceeds rapidly and consequentially ; the interest 
not for one moment being permitted to flag. Its incidents are 
admirably conceived and skilfully wrought into execution. Its 
dramatis persona?, throughout, have the high merit of being na- 
tural, although, except in the case of Pauline, there is no marked 
individuality. She is a creation which would have done no dis- 
honor to Shakspeare. She excites profound emotion. It has 
been sillily objected to her, that she is weak, mercenary, and at 
points ignoble. She is ; and what then ? We are not dealing 
with Clarissa Harlowe. Bulwer has painted a woman. The 
chief defect of the play lies in the heroine's consenting to wed 
Beauseant, while aware of the existence and even the continued 
love of Claude. As the plot runs, there is a question in Pau- 
line's soul between a comparatively trivial (because merely world- 
ly) injury to her father, and utter ruin and despair inflicted upon 
her husband. Here there should not have been an instant's hesi- 
tation. The audience have no sympathy with any. Nothing on 
earth should have induced the wife to give up the living Melnotte. 
Only the assurance of his death could have justified her in sacri- 
ficing herself to Beauseant. As it is, we hate her for the sacrifice. 
The effect is repulsive — but I must be understood as calling this 
effect objectionable solely on the ground of its being at war with 
the whole genius of the play. 

CXCV. 

" Contempt," says an eastern proverb, " pierces even through 
the shell of the tortoise ;" but the skull of a Fuller would feel 
itself insulted by a comparison, in point of impermeability, with 
the shell of a Gallipago turtle. 

CXCVI. 

How thoroughly comprehensive is the account of Adam, as 
given at the bottom of the old picture in the Vatican ! — "Adam, 
divinitus edoctus, primus scientiarum et literarum inventor" VII 



576 MARGINALIA. 



CXCVII. 

If need were, I should have little difficulty, perhaps, in defend- 
ing a certain apparent dogmatism to which I am prone, on the 
topic of versification. 

" What is Poetry ?" notwithstanding Leigh Hunt's rigmarolic 
attempt at answering it, is a query that, with great care and de- 
liberate agreement beforehand on the exact value of certain lead- 
ing words, ma]/, possibly, be settled to the partial satisfaction of 
a few analytical intellects, but which, in the existing condition of 
metaphysics, never can be settled to the satisfaction of the ma- 
jority ; for the question is purely metaphysical, and the whole 
science of metaphysics is at present a chaos, through the impos- 
sibility of fixing the meanings of the words which its very nature 
compels it to employ. But as regards versification, this difficulty 
is only partial ; for although one-third of the topic may be con- 
sidered metaphysical, and thus may be mooted at the fancy of 
this individual or of that, still the remaining two-thirds belong, 
undeniably, to the mathematics. The questions ordinarily dis- 
cussed with so much gravity in regard to rhythm, metre, etc., are 
susceptible of positive adjustment by demonstration. Their laws 
are merely a portion of the Median laws of form and quantity — 
of relation. In respect, then, to any of these ordinary questions 
— these sillily moot points which so often arise in common criti- 
cism — the prosodist would speak as weakly in saying " this or 
that proposition is probably so and so, or possibly so and so," as 
would the mathematician in admitting that, in his humble opinion, 
or if he were not greatly mistaken, any two sides of a triangle 
were, together, greater than the third side. I must add, however, 
as some palliation of the discussions referred to, and of the ob- 
jections so often urged with a sneer to " particular theories of 
versification binding no one but their inventor" — that there is 
really extant no such work as a Prosody Raisonnee. The Proso- 
dies of the schools are merely collections of vague laws, with 
their more vague exceptions, based upon no principles whatever, 
but extorted in the most speculative manner from the usages of 
the ancients, who had no laws be} 7 ond those of their ears and 
fingers. " And these were sufficient," it will be said, " since ' The 
Iliad' is melodious and harmonious beyond anything of modern 



MARGINALIA. 577 



times." Admit this : — but neither do we write in Greek, nor has 
the invention of modern times been as yet exhausted. An an- 
alysis based on the natural laws of which the bard of Scios was 
ignorant, would suggest multitudinous improvements to the best 
passages of even "The Iliad" — nor does it in any manner follow 
from the supposititious fact that Homer found in his ears and 
fingers a satisfactory system of rules (the point which I have just 
denied) — nor does it follow, I say, from this, that the rules which 
we deduce from the Homeric effects are to supersede those immu- 
table principles of time, quantity, etc. — the mathematics, in short, 
of music — which must have stood to these Homeric effects in the 
relation of causes — the mediate causes of which these "ears and 
fingers" are simply the intermedia. 

CXCVIII. 

Of Berryer, somebody says " he is the man in whose descrip- 
tion is the greatest possible consumption of antithesis." For 
" description " read " lectures," and the sentence would apply well 
to Hudson, the lecturer on Shakspeare. Antithesis is his end — 
he has no other. He does not employ it to enforce thought, but 
he gathers thought from all quarters with the sole view to its 
capacity for antithetical expression. His essays have thus only 
paragraphical effect; as wholes, they produce not the slightest 
impression. No man living could say what it is Mr. Hudson pro- 
poses to demonstrate ; and if the question were propounded to 
Mr. H. himself, we can fancy how particularly embarrassed he 
would be for a reply. In the end, were he to answer honestly, 
he would say — " antithesis." 

As for his reading, Julius Caesar would have said of him that 

he sang ill, and undoubtedly he must have " gone to the dogs " 

for his experience in pronouncing the r as if his throat were bored 

like a rifle-barrel.* 

CXCIX. 

It is James Montgomery who thinks proper to style McPherson's 

" Ossian " a collection of halting, dancing, lumbering, grating, 

nondescript paragraphs." 

* " Nee Mi (Demontheni) turpe videbatur vel, optimis relictis magistris, ad 
canes se conferre, et ah Mis literal vim et naturam petere, Morumque in so- 
nando, quod satis est, morem imitari." — Ad Meker. de vet. Pron. Line-. Graecse. 
Vol. III.— 25 



578 MARGINALIA. 



CC. 
A book* which puzzles me beyond measure, since, while agree- 
ing with its general conclusions, (except where it discusses pre- 
vision,) I invariably find fault with the reasoning through which 
the conclusions are attained. I think the treatise grossly illogical 
throughout. For example : — the origin of the work is thus stated 
in an introductory chapter : 

About twelve months since, I was asked by some friends to write a paper 
against Mesmerism — and I was furnished with materials by a highly es- 
teemed quondam pupil, which proved incontestably, that under some circum- 
stances the operator might be duped — that hundreds of enlightened persons 
might equally be deceived — and certainly went far to show that the pre- 
tended science was wholly a delusion — a system of fraud and jugglery by 
which the imaginations of the credulous were held in thraldom through the 
arts of the designing. Perhaps in an evil hour I assented to the proposition 
thus made — but on reflection, I found that the facts before me only led to 
the direct proof that certain phenomena might be counterfeited ; and the ex- 
istence of counterfeit coin is rather a proof that there is somewhere the 
genuine standard gold to be imitated. 

The fallacy here lies in a mere variation of what is called 
" begging the question." Counterfeit coin is said to prove the 
existence of genuine : — this, of course, is no more than the truism 
that there can be no counterfeit where there is no genuine — just 
as there can be no badness where there is no goodness — the terms 
being purely relative. But because there can be no counterfeit 
where there is no original, does it in any manner follow that any 
undemonstrated original exists ? In seeing a spurious coin we 
know it to be such by comparison with coins admitted to be gen- 
uine ; but were no coin admitted to be genuine, how should we 
establish the counterfeit, and what right should we have to talk 
of counterfeits at all ? Now, in the case of Mesmerism, our au- 
thor is merely begging the admission. In saying that the exist- 
ence of counterfeit proves the existence of real Mesmerism, he 
demands that the real be admitted. Either he demands this or 
there is no shadow of force in his proposition — for it is clear that 
we can pretend to be that which is not. A man, for instance, may 
feign himself a sphynx or a griffin, but it would never do to re- 

* Human Magnetism : Its Claim to Dispassionate Inquiry. Being an 
Attempt to show the Utility of its Application for the Relief of Human Suf- 
fering. By W. Newnham, M. R. S. L. Author of the Reciprocal Influence 
of Body and Mind. Wiley & Putnam. 






MARGINALIA. 579 



gard as thus demonstrated the actual existence of either griffins 
or sphynxes. A word alone — the word "counterfeit" — has been 
sufficient to lead Mr. Newnham astray. People cannot be properly 
said to "counterfeit" prevision, etc., but to feign these phenomena. 
Dr. Newnham's argument, of course, is by no means original with 
him, although he seems to pride himself on it as if it were. Dr. 
More says : " That there should be so universal a fame and fear 
of that which never was, nor is, nor can be ever in the world, is 
to me the greatest miracle of all. If there had not been, at some 
time or other, true miracles, it had not been so easy to impose on 
the people by false. The alchemist would never go about to so- 
phisticate metals, to pass them off for true gold and silver, unless 
that such a thing was acknowledged as true gold and silver in 
the world." This is precisely the same idea as that of Dr. Newn- 
ham, and belongs to that extensive class of argumentation which 
is all point — deriving its whole effect from epigram matism. That 
the belief in ghosts, or in a Deity, or in a future state, or in any- 
thing else credible or incredible — that any such belief is univer- 
sal, demonstrates nothing more than that which needs no de- 
monstration — the human unanimity — the identity of construction 
in the human brain — an identity of which the inevitable result 
must be, upon the whole, similar deductions from similar data 
Most especially do I disagree with the author of this book in his 
(implied) disparagement of the work of Chauncey Hare Town- 
shend — a work to be valued properly only in a day to come. 

CCI. 
The day is done, and the darkness 

Falls from the wings of night, 
As a feather is wafted downward 

From an eagle in its flight.* 

The single feather here is imperfectly illustrative of the omni- 
prevalent darkness ; but a more especial objection is the likening 
of one feather to the falling of another. Night is personified as 
a bird, and darkness — the feather of this bird — falls from it, how ? 
— as another feather falls from another bird. Why, it does this 
of course. The illustration is identical — that is to say, null. It 
has no more force than an identical proposition in logic. 



* Proem to Longfellow's " Waif." 



580 MARGINALIA. 



CCIL 
The question of international copyright has been overloaded 
with words. The right of property in a literary work is disputed 
merely for the sake of disputation, and no man should be at the 
trouble of arguing the point. Those who deny it, have made up 
their minds to deny everything tending to further the law in con- 
templation. Nor is the question of expediency in any respect 
relevant. Expediency is only to be discussed where no rights 
interfere. It would no doubt be very expedient in any poor man 
to pick the pocket of his wealthy neighbor, (as the poor are the 
majority, the case is precisely parallel to the copyright case ;) but 
what would the rich think if expediency were permitted to over- 
rule their right ? But even the expediency is untenable, grossly 
so. The immediate advantage arising to the pockets of our peo- 
ple, in the existing condition of things, is no doubt sufficiently 
plain. We get more reading for less money than if the inter- 
national law existed ; but the remoter disadvantages are of 
infinitely greater weight. In brief, they are these : First, we 
have injury to our national literature by repressing the efforts 
of our men of genius ; for genius, as a general rule, is poor in 
worldly goods and cannot write for nothing. Our genius being 
thus repressed, we are written at only by our " gentlemen of 
elegant leisure," and mere gentlemen of elegant leisure have been 
noted, time out of mind, for the insipidity of their productions. 
In general, too, they are obstinately conservative, and this feeling 
leads them into imitation of foreign, more especially of British 
models. This is one main source of the imitativeness with which, 
as a people, we have been justly charged, although the first cause 
is to be found in our position as a colony. Colonies have always 
naturally aped the mother land. In the second place, irreparable 
ill is wrought by the almost exclusive dissemination among us of 
foreign — that is to say, of monarchical or aristocratical sentiment 
in foreign books ; nor is this sentiment less fatal to democracy 
because it reaches the people themselves directly in the gilded 
pill of the poem or the novel. We have next to consider the 
impolicy of our committing, in the national character, an open 
and continuous wrong on the frivolous pretext of its benefiting 
ourselves. The last and by far the most important consideration 



MARGINALIA. 681 



of all, however, is that sense of insult and injury aroused in the 
whole active intellect of the world, the bitter and fatal resentment 
excited in the universal heart of literature — a resentment which 
will not and which cannot make nice distinctions between the 
temporary perpetrators of the wrong and that democracy in 
general which permits its perpetration. The autorial body is the 
most autocratic on the face of the earth. How, then, can those 
institutions even hope to be safe which systematically persist in 
trampling it under foot ? 

CCIII. 

The drama, as the chief of the imitative arts, has a tendency to 
beget and keep alive in its votaries the imitative propensity. This 
might be supposed a priori, and experience confirms the supposi- 
tion. Of all imitators, dramatists are the most perverse, the 
most unconscionable, or the most unconscious, and have been so 
time out of mind. Euripides and Sophocles were merely echoes 
of iEschylus, and not only was Terence Menander and nothing 
beyond, but of the sole Roman tragedies extant, (the ten attribut- 
ed to Seneca,) nine are on Greek subjects. Here, then, is cause 
enough for the " decline of the drama," if we are to believe that 
the drama has declined. But it has not : on the contrary, during 
the last fifty years it has materially advanced. All other arts, 
however, have, in the same interval, advanced at a. far greater rate 
— each very nearly in the direct ratio of its non-imitativeness — 
painting, for example, least of all — and the effect on the drama is, 
of course, that of apparent retrogradation. 

CCIY. 
The Swedenborgians inform me that they have discovered all 
that I said in a magazine article, entitled " Mesmeric Revelation," 
to be absolutely true, although at first they were very strongly in- 
clined to doubt my veracity — a thing which, in that particular 
instance, I never dreamed of not doubting myself. The story is 
a pure fiction from beginning to end. 

CCV. 
Here is a book of " amusing travels," which is full enough of 
statistics to have been the joint composition of Messieurs Busch- 
ing, Hassel, Cannabitch, Gaspari, Gutsmuth and company. 



582 MARGINALIA. 



CCVL 
I have never yet seen an English heroic verse on the proper 
model of the Greek — although there have been innumerable at- 
tempts, among which those of Coleridge are, perhaps, the most 
absurd, next to those of Sir Philip Sidney and Longfellow. The 
author of " The Vision of Rubeta " has done better, and Percival 
better yet ; but no one has seemed to suspect that the natural 
preponderance of spondaic words in the Latin and Greek must, 
in the English, be supplied by art — that is to say, by a careful 
culling of the few spondaic words which the language affords — as, 
for example, here : 

Man is a | complex, | compound, | compost, | yet is he ] God-born. 

This, to all intents, is a Greek hexameter, but then its spondees, 
are spondees, and not mere trochees. The verses of Coleridge 
and others are dissonant, for the simple reason that there is no 
equality in time between a trochee and a dactyl. When Sir 
Philip Sidney writes, 

So to the | woods Love | runnes as | well as | rides to the J palace, 
he makes an heroic verse only to the eye ; for " woods Love " 
is the only true spondee, " runs as," " well as," and " palace," have 
each the first syllable long and the second short — that is to say, 
they are all trochees, and occupy less time than the dactyls or 
spondee — hence the halting. Now, all this seems to be the sim- 
plest thing in the world, and the only wonder is how men pro- 
fessing to be scholars should attempt to engraft a verse, of which 
the spondee is an element, upon a stock which repels the spondee 

as antagonistical. 

CCVII. 

In the sweet " Lily of Nithsdale," we read — ■ 

She's gane to dwell in heaven, my lassie — 

She's gane to dwell in heaven ; — 
Ye're ow're pure, quo' the voice of God, 

For dwelling out o' heaven. 

The owre and the o' of the two last verses should be Anglici- 
zed. The Deity at least, should be supposed to speak so as to be 
understood — although I am aware that a folio has been written 
to demonstrate broad Scotch as the language of Adam and Eve 



in Paradise. 



MARGINALIA. 583 



CCVIII. 
The conclusion of the Proem in Mr. Longfellow's late " Waif " 
is exceedingly beautiful. The whole poem is remarkable in this, 
that one of its principal excellences arises from what is gene- 
tically, a demerit. No error, for example, is more certainly fatal 
in poetry than defective rhythm ; but here the slipshodiness is so 
thoroughly in unison with the nonchalant air of the thoughts — 
which again, are so capitally applicable to the thing done (a mere 
introduction of other people's fancies) — that the effect of the 
looseness of rhythm becomes palpable, and we see at once that 
here is a case in which to be correct would be inartistic. Here 
are three of the quatrains — 

I see the lights of the village 

Gleam through the rain and the mist, 
And a feeling of sadness comes over me 

That my soul cannot resist — 

A feeling of sadness and longing 

That is not akin to pain, 
And resembles sorrow only 

As the mists resemble the rain 

And the night shall be filled with music, 

And the cares that infest the day 
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs, 

And as silently steal away. 

Now these lines are not to be scanned. They are referable to 
no true principles of rhythm. The general idea is that of a 
succession of anapaests ; yet not only is this idea confounded 
with that of dactyls, but this succession is improperly interrupted 
at all points — improperly, because by unequivalent feet. The 
partial prosaicism thus brought about, however, (without any 
interference with the mere melody,) becomes a beauty solely 
through the nicety of its adaptation to the tone of the poem, and 
of this tone, again, to the matter in hand. In his keen sense of 
this adaptation, (which conveys the notion of what is vaguely 
termed " ease,") the reader so far loses sight of the rhythmical 
imperfection that he can be convinced of its existence only by 
treating in the same rhythm (or, rather, lack of rhythm) a sub- 
ject of different tone — a subject in which decision shall take the 
place of nonchalance. Now, undoubtedly, I intend all this as 
complimentary to Mr. Longfellow ; but it was for the utterance 



584 MARGINALIA. 



of these very opinions in the " New York Mirror " that I was ac- 
cused, by some of the poet's friends, of inditing what they think 
proper to call " strictures " on the author of " Outre-Mer." 

CCIX. 
We might contrive a very poetical and very suggestive, although, 
perhaps, no very tenable philosophy, by supposing that the virtuous 
live while the wicked suffer annihilation, hereafter ; and that the 
danger of the annihilation (which danger would be in the ratio of 
the sin) might be indicated nightly by slumber, and occasionally, with 
more distinctness, by a swoon. In proportion to the dreamlessness 
of the sleep, for example, w r ould be the degree of the soul's 
liability to annihilation. In the same way, to swoon and awake 
in utter unconsciousness of any lapse of time during the syncope, 
would demonstrate the soul to have been then in such condition 
that, had death occurred, annihilation w r ould have followed. On 
the other hand, when the revival is attended with remembrance of 
visions, (as is now and then the case, in fact,) then the soul to be 
considered in such condition as would insure its existence after the 
bodily death — the bliss or wretchedness of the existence to be in- 
dicated by the character of the visions. 

ccx. 

When we attend less to " authority" and more to principles, 
when we look less at merit and more at demerit, (instead of the 
converse, as some persons suggest,) we shall then be better critics 
than we are. We must neglect our models and study our capa- 
bilities. The mad eulogies on what occasionally has, in letters, 
been well done, spring from our imperfect comprehension of what 
it is possible for us to do better. " A man who has never seen 
the sun," says Calderon, u cannot be blamed for thinking that no 
glory can exceed that of the moon ; a man who has seen neither 
moon nor sun, cannot be blamed for expatiating on the incomparable 
effulgence of the morning star." Now, it is the business of the 
critic so to soar that he shall see the sun, even although its orb be 
far below the ordinary horizon. 

CCXL 

The United State's motto, E pluribus unum, may possibly have 
a sly allusion to Pythagoras' definition of beauty — the reduction 
of many into one. 



MARGINALIA. 585 



CCXIL 

The great feature of the " Curiosity Shop " is its chaste, vigor- 
ous, and glorious imagination. This is the one charm, all potent, 
which alone would suffice to compensate for a world more of error 
than Mr. Dickens ever committed. It is not only seen in the con- 
ception, and general handling of the story, or in the invention of 
character ; but it pervades every sentence of the book. We re- 
cognise its prodigious influence in every inspired word. It is this 
which induces the reader who is at all ideal, to pause frequently, 
to re-read the occasionally quaint phrases, to muse in uncontrolla- 
ble delight over thoughts which, while he wonders he has never 
hit upon them before, he yet admits that he never has encountered. 
In fact it is the wand of the enchanter. 

Had we room to particularize, we would mention as points 
evincing most distinctly the ideality of the "Curiosity Shop" — 
the picture of the shop itself — the newly-born desire of the worldly 
old man for the peace of green fields — his whole character and 
conduct, in short — the schoolmaster, with his desolate fortunes, 
seeking affection in little children — the haunts of Quilp among 
the wharf-rats — the tinkering: of the Punch-men amon£ the tombs 
— the glorious scene where the man of the forge sits poring, at 
deep midnight, into that dread fire — again the whole conception of 
this character ; and, last and greatest, the stealthy approach of 
Nell to her death — her gradual sinking away on the journey to 
the village, so skilfully indicated rather than described — her pen- 
sive and prescient meditation — the fit of strange musing which 
came over her when the house in which she was to die first broke 
upon her sight — the description of this house, of the old church, 
and of the church-yard — everything in rigid consonance with the 
one impression to be conveyed — that deep meaningless well — the 
comments of the Sexton upon death, and upon his own secure 
life — this whole world of mournful yet peaceful idea merging, at 
length, into the decease of the child Nelly, and the uncompre- 
hending despair of the grandfather. These concluding scenes are 
so drawn that human language, urged by human thought, could 
go no farther in the excitement of human feelings. And the pa- 
thos is of that best order which is relieved, in great measure, by 
ideality. Here the book has never been equalled, — never ap- 

25* 



686 MARGINALIA. 



proached except in one instance, and that is in the case of the 
" Undine" of De La Motte Fouque. The imagination is perhaps 
as great in this latter work, but the pathos, although truly beau- 
tiful and deep, fails of much of its effect through the material 
from which it is wrought. The chief character, being endowed 
with purely fanciful attributes, cannot command our full sympa- 
thies, as can a simple denizen of earth. In saying, a page or so 
above, that the death of the child left too painful an impression, 
and should therefore have been avoided, we must, of course, be 
understood as referring to the work as a whole, and in respect to 
its general appreciation and popularity. The death, as recorded, 
is, we repeat, of the highest order of literary excellence — yet while 
none can deny this fact, there are few who will be willing to read 
the concluding passages a second time. 

Upon the whole we think the " Curiosity Shop " very much 
the best of the works of Mr. Dickens. It is scarcely possible to 
speak of it too well. It is in all respects a tale which will secure 
for its author the enthusiastic admiration of every man of ge- 
nius. 

CCXIII. 

It is not every one who can put " a good thing " properly 
together, although, perhaps, when thus properly put together, 
every tenth person you meet with may be capable of both con- 
ceiving and appreciating it. We cannot bring ourselves to believe 
that less actual ability is required in the composition of a really 
good " brief article," than in a fashionable novel of the usual 
dimensions. The novel certainly requires what is denominated a 
sustained effort — but this is a matter of mere perseverance, and 
has but a collateral relation to talent. On the other hand — unity 
of effect, a quality not easily appreciated or indeed comprehended 
by an ordinary mind, and a desideratum difficult of attainment, 
even by those who can conceive it — is indispensable in the " brief 
article," and not so in the common novel. The latter, if admired 
at all, is admired for its detached passages, without reference to 
the work as a whole — or without reference to any general design 
— which, if it even exist in some measure, will be found to have 
occupied but little of the writer's attention, and cannot, from the 
length of the narrative, be taken in at one view, by the reader. 



MARGINALIA. 587 



CCXIV. 
I am not sure that Tennyson is not the greatest of poets. 
The uncertainty attending the public conception of the term 
" poet " alone prevents me from demonstrating that he is. Other 
bards produce effects which are, now and then, otherwise produced 
than by what we call poems ; but Tennyson an effect which only 
a poem does. His alone are idiosyncratic poems. By the enjoy- 
ment or non-enjoyment of the " Morte D'Arthur," or of the 
" iEnone," I would test any one's ideal sense. There are passages 
in his works which rivet a conviction I had long entertained, that 
the indefinite is an element in the true nolens. Why do some 
persons fatigue themselves in attempts to unravel such fantasy- 
pieces as the " Lady of Shalott ?" As well unweave the " ventum 
textilem." If the author did net deliberately propose to himself 
a suggestive indefinitiveness of meaning, with the view of bring- 
ing about a definitiveness of vague and therefore of spiritual effect 
— this, at least, arose from the silent analytical promptings of that 
poetic genius which, in its supreme development, embodies all 
orders of intellectual capacity. I know that indefinitiveness is an 
element of the true music — I mean of the true musical expression. 
Give to it any undue decision — imbue it with any very determin- 
ate tone — and you deprive it, at once, of its ethereal, its ideal, its 
intrinsic and essential character. You dispel its luxury of dream. 
You dissolve the atmosphere of the mystic upon which it floats. 
You exhaust it of its breath of faery. It now becomes a tangi- 
ble and easily appreciable idea — a thing of the earth, earthy. It 
has not, indeed, lost its power to please, but all which I consider 
the distinctiveness of that power. And to the uncultivated talent, 
or to the unimaginative apprehension, this deprivation of its most 
delicate nare will be, not unfreo L uently, a recommendation. A 
determinateness of expression is sought — and often by composers 
who should know better — is sought as a beauty rather than re- 
jected as a blemish. Thus we have, even from high authorities, 
attempts at absolute imitation in music. Who can forget the silli- 
ness of the " Battle of Prague ?" What man of taste but must 
laugh at the interminable drums, trumpets, blunderbusses, and 
thunder? " Vocal music," says L'Abbate Gravina, who would 
have said the same thing of instrumental, " ought to imitate the 



588 MARGINALIA. 



natural language of the human feelings and passions, rather than 
the warblings of Canary birds, which our singers, now-a-days, 
affect so vastly to mimic with their quaverings and boasted ca- 
dences." This is true only so far as the " rather " is concerned. 
If any music must imitate anything, it were assuredly better to 
limit the imitation as Gravina suggests. Tennyson's shorter pieces 
abound in minute rhythmical lapses sufficient to assure me that 
— in common with all poets living or dead — he has neglected 
to make precise investigation of the principles of metre ; but, on 
the other hand, so perfect is his rhythmical instinct in general, 
that, like the present Viscount Canterbury, he seems to see with 

his ear. 

CCXV. 

There are some facts in the physical world which have a really 
wonderful analogy with others in the world of thought, and seem 
thus to give some color of truth to the (false) rhetorical dogma, 
that metaphor or simile may be made to strengthen an argument, 
as well as to embellish a description. The principle of the vis 
inertice, for example, with the amount of momentum proportionate 
with it and consequent upon it, seems to be identical in physics 
and metaphysics. It is not more true, in the former, that a large 
body is with more difficulty set in motion than a smaller one, and 
that its subsequent impetus is commensurate with this difficulty, 
than it is, in the latter, that intellects of the vaster capacity, while 
more forcible, more constant, and more extensive in their move- 
ments than those of inferior grade, are yet the less readily moved, 
and are more embarrassed and more full of hesitation in the first 

few steps of their progress. 

CCXVI. 

Thomas Moore — the most skilful literary artist of his day — 
perhaps of any day — a man who stands in the singular and really 
wonderful predicament of being undervalued on account of the 
profusion with which he has scattered about him his good things. 
The brilliancy on any one page of Lalla Rookh would have sufficed 
to establish that very reputation which has been in a great mea- 
sure self-dimned by the galaxied lustre of the entire book. It 
seems that the horrid laws of political economy cannot be evaded 
even by the inspired, and that a perfect versification, a vigorous 



MARGINALIA. 589 



style, and a never-tiring fancy, may, like the water we drink and 
die without, yet despise, be so plentifully set forth as to be abso- 
lutely of no value at all. 

CCXVII 

This is a queer little book,* which its author regards as " not 
only necessary, but urgently called for," because not only "the 
mass of the people are ignorant of English Grammar, but because 
those who profess great knowledge of it, and even those who make 
the teaching of it their business, will be found, upon examination, 
to be very far from understanding its principles/' 

Whether Mr. P. proceeds upon the safe old plan of Probo 
meliora, deteriora sequor — whether he is one of " the mass," and 
means to include himself among the ignoramuses — or whether 
he is only a desperate quiz — we shall not take it upon ourselves 
to say ; but the fact is clear that, in a Preface of less than two 
small duodecimo pages (the leading object of which seems to be 
an eulogy upon one William Cobbett,) he has given us some half 
dozen distinct instances of bad grammar. 

"For these purposes," says he — that is to say — the purposes of 
instructing mankind and enlightening "every American youth'' 
without exception — "for these purposes, I have written my lessons 
in a series of letters. A mode that affords more opportunity for 
plainness, familiarity, instruction, and entertainment, than any other. 
A mode that was adopted by Chesterfield, in his celebrated instruc- 
tions on politeness. A mode that was adopted by Smollett, in 
many of his novels, which, even at this day, hold a distinguished 
place in the world of fiction. A mode that was adopted by Wil- 
liam Cobbett, not only in his admirable treatise on English Gram- 
mar, but in nearly every work that he wrote." " To Mr. Cobbett," 
adds the instructer of every American youth — " to Mr. Cobbett I 
acknowledge myself indebted for the greater part of the grammat- 
ical knowledge which I possess." Of the fact stated there can be 
no question. Nobody but Cobbett could have been the grammat- 
ical Mentor of Mr. Pue, whose book (which is all Cobbett) speaks 
plainly upon the point — nothing but the ghost of William Cobbett, 

* A Grammar of the English Language, in a series of Letters, addressed to 
every American Youth. By Hugh A. Pue. Philadelphia: Published by 
the Author. 



590 MARGINALIA. 



looking over the shoulder of Hugh A. Pue, could have inspired 
the latter gentleman with the bright idea of stringing together 
four consecutive sentences, in each of which the leading nominative 
noun is destitute of a verb. 

Mr. Pue may attempt to justify his phraseology here, by saying 
that the several sentences, quoted above, commencing with the 
words, " A mode," are merely continuations of the one beginning 
"For these purposes;" but this is no justification at all. By the 
use of the period, he has rendered each sentence distinct, and each 
must be examined as such, in respect to its grammar. We are 
only taking the liberty of condemning Mr. P. by the words of his 
own mouth. Turning to page 72, where he treats of punctuation, 
we read as follows : — " The full point is used at the end of every 
complete sentence ; and a complete sentence is a collection of words 
making a complete sense, without being dependent upon another 
collection of words to convey the full meaning intended." Now, 
what kind of a meaning can we give to such a sentence as " A mode 
that was adopted by Chesterfield in his celebrated instructions on 
politeness," if we are to have " no dependence upon " the sentences 
that precede it? But, even in the supposition that these five 
sentences had been run into one, as they should have been, they 
would still be ungrammatical. For example — " For these purposes 
I have written my lessons in a series of letters — a mode that affords 
more opportunity for plainness, familiarity, instruction, and enter- 
tainment than any other — a mode, etc." This would have been 
the proper method of punctuation. " A mode " is placed in ap- 
position with " a series of letters." But it is evident that it is 
not the " series of letters " which is the " mode." It is the writing 
the lessons in a series which is so. Yet, in order that the noun 
" mode " can be properly placed in apposition with what precedes 
it, this latter must be either a noun, or a sentence, which, taken 
collectively, can serve as one. Thus, in any shape, all that we 
have quoted is bad grammar. 

We say " bad grammar,'' 1 and say it through sheer obstinacy, 
because Mr. Pue says we should not. " Why, what is grammar ?" 
asks he indignantly. " Nearly all grammarians tell us that grammar 
is the writing and speaking of the English language correctly. 
What then is bad grammar ? Why bad grammar must be the bad 



MARGINALIA. 591 



■writing and speaking of the English language correctly ! !'' We 
give the two admiration notes and all. 

In the first place, if grammar be only the writing and speaking 
the English language correctly, then the French, or the Dutch, or 
the Kickapoos are miserable, ungrammatical races of people, and 
have no hopes of being anything else, unless Mr. Pue proceeds to 
their assistance: — but let us say nothing of this for the present. 
What we wish to assert is, that the usual definition of grammar, 
as " the writing and speaking correctly" is an error which should 
have been long ago exploded. Grammar is the analysis of language, 
and this analysis will be good or bad, just as the capacity employed 
upon it be weak or strong — just as the grammarian be a Home 
Tooke or a Hugh A. Pue. But perhaps, after all, we are treating 
this gentleman discourteously. His book may be merely intended 
as a good joke. By the by, he says in his preface, that " while 
he informs the student, he shall take particular care to entertain 
him." Now, the truth is, we have been exceedingly entertained. 
In such passages as the following, however, which we find upon 
the second page of the Introduction, we are really at a loss to 
determine whether it is the utile or the dulce which prevails. We 
give the italics of Mr. Pue; without which, indeed, the singular 
force and beauty of the paragraph cannot be duly appreciated. 

" The proper study of English grammar, so far from being dry, 
is one of the most rational enjoyments known to us ; one that is 
highly calculated to rouse the dormant energies of the student ; 
it requiring continual mental effort ; unceasing exercise of mind. 
It is, in fact, the spreading of a thought-producing plaster of paris 
upon the extensive grounds of intellect ! It is the parent of idea, 
and great causation of reflection ; the mighty instigator of insur- 
rection in the interior ; and, above all, the unflinching champion 
of internal improvement ! " We know nothing about plaster of 
Paris ; but the analogy which subsists between ipecac and grammar 
— at least between ipecac and the grammar of Mr. Pue — never, 
certainly, struck us in so clear a point of view, as it does now. 

But, after all, whether Mr. P.'s queer little book shall or shall 
not meet the views of " Every American Youth," will depend pretty 
much upon another question of high moment — whether " Every 
American Youth " be or be not as great a nincompoop as Mr. Pue. 



592 MARGINALIA. 



CCXVIII. 
That Lord Brougham was an extraordinary man no one in his 
senses will deny. An intellect of unusual capacity, goaded into 
diseased action by passions nearly ferocious, enabled him to asto- 
nish the world, and especially the " hero-worshippers," as the 
author of Sartor-Resartus has it, by the combined extent and 
variety of his mental triumphs. Attemping many things, it may 
at least be said that he egregiously failed in none. But that he 
pre-eminently excelled in any cannot be affirmed with truth, and 
might well be denied a priori. We have no faith in admirable 
Crichtons, and this merely because we have implicit faith in Na- 
ture and her laws. " He that is born to be a man," says Wieland, 
in his Peregrinus Proteus, " neither should nor can be anything 
nobler, greater, nor better than a man." The Broughams of the 
human intellect are never its Newtons or its Bayles. Yet the 
contemporaneous reputation to be acquired by the former is na- 
turally greater than any which the latter may attain. The versa- 
tility of one whom we see and hear is a more dazzling and more 
readily appreciable merit than his profundity ; which latter is best 
estimated in the silence of the closet, and after the quiet lapse of 
years. What impression Lord Brougham has stamped upon his 
age, cannot be accurately determined until Time has fixed and 
rendered definite the lines of the medal ; and fifty years hence it 
will be difficult, perhaps to make out the deepest indentation of 
the exergue. Like Coleridge he should be regarded as one who 
might have done much, had he been satisfied with attempting but 

little. 

CCXIX. 

The Art of Mr. Dickens, although elaborate and great, seems 
only a happy modification of Nature. In this respect he differs 
remarkably from the author of " Night and Morning." The lat- 
ter, by excessive care and by patient reflection, aided by much 
rhetorical knowledge, and general information, has arrived at the 
capability of producing books which might be mistaken by ninety- 
nine readers out of a hundred, for the genuine inspirations of 
genius. The former, by the promptings of the truest genius itself, 
has been brought to compose, and evidently without effort, works 
which have effected a long-sought consummation — which have 



MARGINALIA. 593 



rendered him the idol of the people, while defying and enchanting 
the critics. Mr. Bulvver, through art, has almost created a genius. 
Mr. Dickens, through genius, has pefected a standard from which 
art itself will derive its essence in rules. 

CCXX. 
While Defoe would have been fairly entitled to immortality had 
he never written Robinson Crusoe, yet his many other very excel- 
lent writings have nearly faded from our attention, in the superior 
lustre of the Adventures of the Mariner of York. What better 
possible species of reputation could the author have desired for 
that book than the species which it has so long enjoyed? It has 
become a household thing in nearly every family in Christendom. 
Yet never was admiration of any work — universal admiration — 
more indiscriminately or more inappropriately bestowed. Not 
one person in ten — nay, not one person in five hundred, has, dur- 
ing the perusal of Robinson Crusoe, the most remote conception 
that any particle of genius, or even of common talent, has been 
employed in its creation ! Men do not look upon it in the light of 
a literary performance. Defoe has none of their thoughts — Ro- 
binson all. The powers which have wrought the wonder have been 
thrown into obscurity by the very stupendousness of the wonder 
they have wrought ! We read, and become perfect abstractions in 
the intensity of our interest — we close the book, and are quite 
satisfied that we could have written as well ourselves. All this is 
effected by the potent magic of verisimilitude. Indeed the author 
of Crusoe must have possessed, above ail other faculties, what has 
been termed the faculty of identification — that dominion exercised 
by volition over imagination which enables the mind to lose its 
own, in a fictitious, individuality. This includes, in a very great 
degree, the power of abstraction ; and with these keys we may 
partially unlock the mystery of that spell which has so long invest- 
ed the volume before us. But a complete analysis of our interest 
in it cannot be thus afforded. Defoe is largely indebted to his 
subject. The idea of man in a state of perfect isolation, although 
often entertained, was never before so comprehensively carried out. 
Indeed the frequency of its occurrence to the thoughts of mankind 
argued the extent of its influence on their sympathies, while the 
fact of no attempt having been made to give an embodied form to 



594 MARGINALIA. 



the conception, went to prove the difficulty of the undertaking 
But the true narrative of Selkirk in 1711, with the powerful im 
pression it then made upon the public mind, sufficed to inspire 
Defoe with both the necessary courage for his work, and entire 
confidence in its success. How wonderful has been the result ! 

CCXXI. 

The increase, within a few years, of the magazine literature, is 
by no means to be regarded as indicating what some critics would 
suppose it to indicate — a downward tendency in American taste 
or in American letters. It is but a sign of the times — an indica- 
tion of an era in which men are forced upon the curt, the con- 
densed, the well-digested — in place of the voluminous — in a word, 
upon journalism in lieu of dissertation. We need now the light 
artillery rather than the Peace-makers of the intellect. I will not 
be sure that men at present think more profoundly than half a 
century ago, but beyond question they think with more rapidity, 
with more skill, with more tact, with more of method and less of 
excrescence in the thought. Besides all this, they have a vast in- 
crease in the thinking material ; they have more facts, more to 
think about. For this reason, they are disposed to put the great- 
est amount of thought in the smallest compass and disperse it 
with the utmost attainable rapidity. Hence the journalism of the 
age ; hence, in especial, magazines. Too many we cannot have, 
as a general proposition ; but we demand that they have sufficient 
merit to render them noticeable in the beginning, and that they 
continue in existence sufficiently long to permit us a fair estima- 
tion of their value. 

CCXXII. 

One half the pleasure experienced at a theatre arises from 
the spectator's sympathy with the rest of the audience, and, espe- 
cially, from his belief in'their sympathy with him. The eccentric 
gentleman who not long ago, at the Park, found himself the soli- 
tary occupant of box, pit, and gallery, would have derived but 
little enjoyment from his visit, had he been suffered to remain. 
It was an act of mercy to turn him out. The present absurd rage 
for lecturing is founded in the feeling in question. Essays which 
we would not be hired to read — so trite is their subject — so feeble 
is their execution — so much easier is it to get better information on 



MARGINALIA. 595 



similar themes out of any encyclopaedia in Christendom — we are 
brought to tolerate, and alas, even to applaud in their tenth and 
twentieth repetition, through the sole force of our sympathy with 
the throng. In the same way we listen to a story with greater 
zest when there are fliers present at its narration beside our- 
selves. Aware of this, authors without due reflection have re- 
peatedly attempted, by supposing a circle of listeners, to imbue 
their narratives with the interest of sympathy. At a cursory 
glance the idea seems plausible enough. But, in the one case, 
there is an actual, personal, and palpable sympathy, conveyed in 
looks, gestures and brief comments — a sympathy of real indivi- 
duals, all with the matters discussed to be sure, but then espe- 
cially, each with each. In the other instance, we, alone in our 
closet, are required to sympathise with the sympathy of fictitious 
listeners, who, so far from being present in body, are often stu- 
diously kept out of sight and out of mind for two or three hun- 
dred pages at a time. This is sympathy double-diluted — the 
shadow of a shade. It is unnecessary to say that the design in- 
variably fails of its effect. 

CCXXIIL 

The qualities of Heber are well understood. His poetry is of 
a high order. He is imaginative, glowing, and vigorous, with a 
skill in the management of his means unsurpassed by that of any 
writer of his time, but without any high degree of originality. 
Can there be anything in the nature of a " classical " life at war 
with novelty per se ? At all events, few fine scholars, such as 
Heber truly was, are original. 

CCXXIV. 

Original characters, so called, can only be critically praised as 
such, either when presenting qualities known in real life, but never 
before depicted, (a combination nearly impossible) or when pre 
senting qualities (moral, or physical, or both) which, although 
unknown, or even known to be hypothetical, are so skilfully adap- 
ted to the circumstances which surround them, that our sense of fit- 
ness is not offended, and we find ourselves seeking a reason why 
those things might not have been, which we are still satisfied are 
not. The latter species of originality appertains to the loftier regions 
of the Ideal. 



596 MARGINALIA. 



CCXXV. 

George Balcombe, we are induced to regard, upon the whole, 
as the best American novel. There have been few books of its 
peculiar kind, we think, written in any country, much its superior. 
Its interest is intense from beginning to end. Talent of a lofty 
order is evinced in every page of it. Its most distinguishing 
features are invention, vigor, almost audacity, of thought — great 
variety of what the German critics term intrigue, and exceeding 
ingenuity and finish in the adaptation of its component parts. 
Nothing is wanting to a complete whole, and nothing is out of 
place, or out of time. Without being chargeable in the least degree 
with imitation, the novel bears a strong family resemblance to the 
Caleb Williams of Godwin. Thinking thus highly of George 
Balcombe, we still do not wish to be understood as ranking it with 
the more brilliant fictions of some of the living novelists of Great 
Britain. In regard to the authorship of the book, some little 
conversation has occurred, and the matter is still considered a secret. 
But why so ? — or rather, how so ? The mind of the chief person- 
age of the story, is the transcript of a mind familiar to us — an 
unintentional transcript, let us grant — but still one not to be mis- 
taken. George Balcombe thinks, speaks, and acts, as no person, 
we are convinced, but Judge Beverly Tucker, ever precisely thought, 
spoke, or acted before. 



FIFTY SUGGESTIONS. 597 



FIFTY SUGGESTIONS, 



i. 

It is observable that, while among all nations the omni-color, 
white, has been received as an emblem of the Pure, the no-color, 
black, has by no means been generally admitted as sufficiently 
typical of impurity. There are blue devils as well as black ; and 
when we think very ill of a woman, and wish to blacken her char- 
acter, we merely call her " a &Zwe-stocking," and advise her to read, 
in Rabelais' " Gargantua" the chapter " de ce qui est signijie par 
les couleurs blanc et bleu? There is far more difference between 
these " couleurs" in fact, than that which exists between simple 
black and white. Your " blue," when we come to talk of stock- 
ings, is black in issimo — "nigrum nigrious nigro " — like the mat- 
ter from which Raymond Lully first manufactured his alcohol. 

II. 

Mr. , I perceive, has been appointed Librarian to the new 

Athenaeum. To him, the appointment is advantageous in 

many respects. Especially : — " Mon cousin, void une belle occa- 
sion pour apprende a lire /" 

III. 

As far as I can understand the " loving our enemies," it implies 
the hating our friends. 

IV. 

In commencing our dinners with gravy soup, no doubt we have 
taken a hint from Horace — 

Da, he says, si grave non est, 



Quae prima iratum ventrem placaverit isca. 



598 FIFTY SUGGESTIONS. 

V. 

Of much of our cottage architecture we may safely say, I think, 
(admitting the good intention,) that it would have been Gothic if 
it had not felt it its duty to be Dutch. 

VI. 

James's multitudinous novels seem to be written upon the plan 
of " the songs of the Bard of Schiraz," in which, we are assured 
by Fadladeen, " the same beautiful thought occurs again and again 
in every possible variety of phrase.'' 

VII. 

Some of our foreign lions resemble the human brain in one 
very striking particular. They are without any sense themselves, 
and yet are the centres of sensation. 

VIII. 

Mirabeau, I fancy, acquired his wonderful tact at foreseeing and 
meeting contingencies, during his residence in the stronghold of If 

IX 

Cottle's " Reminiscences of Coleridge " is just such a book as 
damns its perpetrator forever in the opinion of every gentleman 
who reads it. More and more every day do we moderns povon- 
eggiarsi about our Christianity ; yet, so far as the spirit of Chris- 
tianity is concerned, we are immeasurably behind the ancients. 
Mottoes and proverbs are the indices of national character ; and 
the Anglo-Saxons are disgraced in having no proverbial equivalent 
to the " De mortuis nil nisi bonum." Moreover — where, in all 
statutary Christendom, shall we find a law so Christian as the 
" Defuncti injuria ne afficiantur " of the Twelve Tables ? The 
simple negative injunction of the Latin law and proverb — the in- 
junction not to do ill to the dead — seems, at a first glance, scarcely 
susceptible of improvement in the delicate respect of its terms. 
I cannot help thinking, however, that the sentiment, if not the 
idea intended, is more forcibly conveyed in an apothegm by one 
of the old English moralists, James Puckle. By an ingenious 
figure of speech he contrives to imbue the negation of the Roman 
command with a spirit of active and positive beneficence. " When 
speaking of the dead," he says, in his " Gray Cap for a Green 
Head," " so fold up your discourse that their virtues may be out- 
wardly shown, while their vices are wrapped up in silence" 



FIFTY SUGGESTIONS. 599 

X. 

I have no doubt that the Fourierites honestly fancy " a nasty 

poet fit for nothing " to be the true translation of " poeta nascitur 

non fit.''' 

J XI. 

There surely cannot be " more things in Heaven and Earth than 

are dreamt of" (oh, Andrew Jackson Davis !) "in your philosophy. 7 * 

XII. 
" It is only as the Bird of Paradise quits us in taking wing," 
observes, or should observe, some poet, " that we obtain a full 
view of the beauty of its plumage ;" and it is only as the poli- 
tician is about being " turned out " that — like the snake of the 
Irish Chronicle when touched by St. Patrick — he " awakens to a 

sense of his situation." 

XIII. 

Newspaper editors seem to have constitutions closely similar to 
those of the Deities in " Walhalla," who cut each other to pieces 
every day, and yet get up perfectly sound and fresh every morn- 
ing. 

XIV. 

As far as I can comprehend the modern cant in favor of " una- 
dulterated Saxon," it is fast leading us to the language of that 
region where, as Addison has it, " they sell the best fish and speak 

the plainest English." 

XV. 

The frightfully long money-pouches — "like the Cucumber called 
the Gigantic " — which have come in vogue among our belles — 
are not of Parisian origin, as many suppose, but are strictly in- 
digenous here. The fact is, such a fashion would be quite out of 
place in Paris, where it is money only that women keep in a 
purse. The purse of an American lady, however, must be large 
enough to carry both her money and the soul of its owner. 

XVL 

I can see no objection to gentlemen " standing for Congress " — 
provided they stand on one side — nor to their " running for Con- 
gress " — if they are in a very great hurry to get there — but it 
would be a blessing if some of them could be persuaded into sit- 
ting still, for Congress, after they arrive. 



600 FIFTY SUGGESTIONS. 

XVII. 
If Envy, as Cyprian has it, be " the moth of the soul," whether 
shall we regard Content as its Scotch snuff or its camphor ? 

XVIII. 

M , having been "used up" in the " Review," goes 

about town lauding his critic — as an epicure lauds the best Lon- 
don mustard — with the tears in his eyes. 

XIX. 

" Con tal que las costumbres de un autor sean puras y castas, 11 
says the Catholic Don Tomas de las Torres, in the preface to his 
"Amatory Poems," "importo muy poco qui no sean igualmente 
severas sus obras :" meaning, in plain English, that, provided the 
personal morals of an author are pure, it matters little what those 
of his books are. 

For so unprincipled an idea, Don Tomas, no doubt, is stiL 
having a hard time of it in Purgatory ; and, by way of most 
pointedly manifesting their disgust at his philosophy on the topic 
in question, many modern theologians and divines are now busily 
squaring their conduct by his proposition exactly conversed. 

XX. 

Children are never too tender to be whipped : — like tough beef- 
steaks, the more you beat them the more tender they become. 

XXI. 

Lucian, in describing the statue "with its surface of Parian 
marble and its interior filled with rags," must have been looking 
with a prophetic eye at some of our great " moneyed institutions." 

XXII. 

That poets (using the word comprehensively, as including ar- 
tists in general) are a genus irritabile, is well understood ; but 
the why, seems not to be commonly seen. An artist m an artist 
only by dint of his exquisite sense of Beauty — a sense affording 
him rapturous enjoyment, but at the same time implying, or in- 
volving, an equally exquisite sense of Deformity of disproportion. 
Thus a wrong — an injustice — done a poet who is really a poet, 
excites him to a degree which, to ordinary apprehension, appears 
disproportionate with the wrong. Poets see injustice — never 
where it does not exist — but very often where the unpoetical see 
no injustice whatever. Thus the poetical irritability has no re- 



FIFTY SUGGESTIONS. 601 



ference to ".temper" in the vulgar sense, but merely to a more 
than usual clear-sightedness in respect to wrong : — this clear- 
sightedness being nothing more than a corollary from the vivid 
perception of right — of justice — of proportion — in a word, of 
to ko.\oi>. But one thing is clear — that the man who is not " irrita- 
ble," (to the ordinary apprehension,) is no poet. 

XXIII. 

Let a man succeed ever so evidently — ever so demonstrably — in 
many different displays of genius, the envy of criticism will agree 
with the popular voice in denying him more than talent in any. 
Thus a poet who has achieved a great (by which I mean an effec- 
tive) poem, should be cautious not to distinguish himself in any 
other walk of Letters. In especial — let him make no effort in 
Science — unless anonymously, or with the view of waiting pa- 
tiently the judgment of posterity. Because universal or even 
versatile geniuses have rarely or never been known, therefore, 
thinks the world, none such can ever be. A "therefore" of this 
kind is, with the world, conclusive. But what is the fact, as 
taught us by analysis of mental power ? Simply, that the high- 
est genius — that the genius which all men instantaneously ac- 
knowledge as such — which acts upon individuals, as well as upon 
the mass, by a species of magnetism incomprehensible but irre- 
sistible and never resisted — that this genius which demonstrates 
itself in the simplest gesture — or even by the absence of all — this 
genius which speaks without a voice and flashes from the un- 
opened eye — is but the result of generally large mental power ex- 
isting in a state of absolute proportion — so that no one faculty 
has undue predominance. That factitious "genius" — that "ge- 
nius" in the popular sense — which is but the manifestation of 
the abnormal predominance of some one faculty over all the 
others — and, of course, at the expense and to the detriment, of 
all the others — is a result of mental disease or rather, of organic 
malformation of mind : — it is this and nothing more. Not only 
will such "genius" fail, if turned aside from the path indicated 
by its predominant faculty ; but, even when pursuing this path — 
when producing those works in which, certainly, it is best calcu- 
lated to succeed — will give unmistakeable indications of unsound- 

Vol. III.— 26 



602 FIFTY SUGGESTIONS. 

ness 1 in respect to general intellect. Hence, indeed, arises the just 
idea that 

" Great wit to madness nearly is allied." 

I say "just idea ;" for by " great wit," in this case, the poet in- 
tends precisely the pseudo-genius to which I refer. The true 
genius, on the other hand, is necessarily, if not universal in its 
manifestations, at least capable of universality ; and if, attempting 
all things, it succeeds in one rather better than in another, this is 
merely on account of a certain bias by which Taste leads it with 
more earnestness in the one direction than in the other. With 
equal zeal, it would succeed equally in all. 

To sum up our results in respect to this very simple, but much 
vexata questio : — 

What the world calls "genius" is the state of mental disease 
arising from the undue predominance of some one of the facul- 
ties. The works of such genius are never sound in themselves, 
and, in especial, always betray the general mental insanity. 

The proportion of the mental faculties, in a case where the 
general mental power is not inordinate, gives that result which 
we distinguish as talent : — and the talent is greater or less, first, 
as the general mental power is greater or less ; and, secondly, as 
the proportion of the faculties is more or less absolute. 

The proportion of the faculties, in a case where the mental 
power is inordinately great, gives that result which is the true 
genius (but which, on account of the proportion and seeming 
simplicity of its works, is seldom acknowledged to be so ;) and 
the genius is greater or less, first, as the general mental power is 
more or less inordinately great ; and, secondly, as the proportion 
of the faculties is more or less absolute. 

An objection will be made : — that the greatest excess of men- 
tal power, however proportionate, does not seem to satisfy our 
idea of genius, unless we have, in addition, sensibility, passion, 
energy. The reply is, that the " absolute proportion " spoken of, 
when applied to inordinate mental power, gives, as a result, the 
appreciation of Beauty and horror of Deformity which we call 
sensibility, together with that intense vitality, which is implied 
when we speak of " Energy " or " Passion." 



FIFTY SUGGESTIONS. 603 

XXIV. 

" And Beauty draws us by a single hair." — Capillary attrac- 
tion, of course. 

XXV. 

It is by no means clear, as regards the present revolutionary 
spirit of Europe, that it is a spirit which " moveth altogether if 
it move at all." In Great Britain it may be kept quiet for half a 
century yet, by placing at the head of affairs an experienced 
medical man. He should keep his forefinger constantly on the 
pulse of the patient, and exhibit panem in gentle doses, with as 
much cir censes as the stomach can be made to retain. 

XXVI. 
The taste manifested by our Transcendental poets, is to be 
treated " reverentially," beyond doubt, as one of Mr. Emerson's 
friends suggests — for the fact is, it is Taste on her death-bed — 
Taste kicking in articulo mortis. 

XXVII. 
I should not say, of Taglioni, exactly that she dances, but that 
she laughs with her arms and legs, and that if she takes ven- 
geance on her present oppressors, she will be amply justified by 

the lex Talionis. 

XXVIII. 

The world is infested, just now, by a new sect of philosophers, 
who have not yet suspected themselves of forming a sect, and 
who, consequently, have adopted no name. They are the Be- 
lievers in everything Old. Their High Priest in the East, is 
Charles Fourier — in the West, Horace Greely; and high priests 
they are to some purpose. The only common bond among the 
sect, is Credulity : — let us call it Insanity at once, and be done 
with it. Ask any one of them why he believes this or that, and, 
if he be conscientious, (ignorant people usually are,) he will make 
you very much such a reply as Talleyrand made when asked 
why he believed in the Bible. " I believe in it first," said he, 
"because I am Bishop of Autun ; and, secondly, because I know 
nothing about it at all. v What these philosophers call " argu- 
ment," is a way they have " de nier ce qui est et d'expliquer ce 
qui n'est pas"* 

* Nouvelle Heloise. 



604 FIFTY SUGGESTIONS. 

XXIX. 

K , the publisher, trying to be critical, talks about books 

pretty much as a washerwoman would about Niagara falls or a 

poulterer about a phoenix. 

XXX. 

The ingenuity of critical malice would often be laughable but 
for the disgust which, even in the most perverted spirits, injustice 
never fails to excite. A common trick is that of decrying, impli- 
edly, the higher, by insisting upon the lower, merits of an author. 
Macaulay, for example, deeply feeling how much critical acumen 
is enforced by cautious attention to the mere "rhetoric" which is its 
vehicle, has at length become the best of modern rhetoricians. 
His brother reviewers — anonymous, of course, and likely to remain 
so forever — extol " the acumen of Carlyle, the analysis of Schlegel, 
and the style of Macaulay." Bancroft is a philosophical historian ; 
but no amount of philosophy has yet taught him to despise a mi- 
nute accuracy in point of fact. His brother historians talk of 
" the grace of Prescott, the erudition of Gibbon, and the pains- 
taking precision of Bancroft." Tennyson, perceiving how vividly 
an imaginative effect is aided, now and then, by a certain quaint- 
ness judiciously introduced, brings this latter, at times, in support 
of his most glorious and most delicate imagination : — whereupon 
his brother poets hasten to laud the imagination of Mr. Somebody, 
whom nobody imagined to have any, " and the somethat affected 
quaintness of Tennyson." — Let the noblest poet add to his other 
excellences — if he dares — that of faultless versification and scru- 
pulous attention to grammar. He is damned at once. His rivals 
have it in their power to discourse of " A. the true poet, and B. 
the versifier and disciple of Lindley Murray." 

XXXI. 

The goddess Laverna, who is a head without a body, could not 

do better, perhaps, than make advances to " La Jeune France,'* 

which, for some years to come, at least, must otherwise remain a 

body without a head. 

XXXII. 

H calls his verse a " poem," very much as Francis the 

First bestowed the title, mes deserts, upon his snug little deer- 
park at Fontainebleau. 



FIFTY SUGGESTIONS. 605 

XXXIII. 

Mr. A is frequently spoken of as " one of our most indus- 
trious writers ;" and, in fact, when we consider how much he has 
written, we perceive, at once, that he must have been industrious, 
or he could never (like an honest woman as he is) have so thor- 
oughly succeeded in keeping himself from being " talked about." 

XXXIV. 

That a cause leads to an effect, is scarcely more certain than 

that, so far as Morals are concerned, a repetition of- effect tends to 

the generation of cause. Herein lies the principle of what we so 

vaguely term " Habit." 

XXXV. 

With the exception of Tennyson's " Locksley Hall," I have 
never read a poem combining so much of the fiercest passion with 
so much of the most delicate imagination, as the " Lady Geral- 
dine's Courtship" of Miss Barrett. lam forced to admit, how- 
ever, that the latter work is a palpable imitation of the former, 
which it surpasses in thesis, as much as it falls below it in a cer- 
tain calm energy, lustrous and indomitable — such as we might 
imagine in a broad river of molten gold. 
XXXVI. 

What has become of the inferior planet which Decuppis, about 
nine years ago, declared he saw traversing the disc of the sun ? 
XXXVII. 

" Ignorance is bliss " — but, that the bliss be real, the ignorance 
must be so profound as not to suspect itself ignorant. With this 
understanding, Boileau's line may be read thus : 

Le plus fou toujours est le plus satisfait," 
— " toujours " in place of " souventP 

XXXVIII. 
Bryant and Street are both, essentially, descriptive poets ; and 
descriptive poetry, even in its happiest manifestation, is not of 
the highest order. But the distinction between Bryant and Street 
is very broad. While the former, in reproducing the sensible 
images of Nature, reproduces the sentiments with which he re- 
gards them, the latter gives us the images and nothing beyond. 
He never forces us to feel what we feel he must have felt. 



606 FIFTY SUGGESTIONS. 

XXXIX. 

In lauding Beauty, Genius merely evinces a filial affection. To 
Genius Beauty gives life — reaping often a reward in Immortality. 

XL. 

And this is the " American Drama " of ! Well ! — that 

" Conscience which makes cowards of us all " will permit me to 
say, in praise of the performance, only that it is not quite so bad 
as I expected it to be. But then I always expect too much. 

XLI. 

What we feel to be Fancy will be found fanciful still, whatever 
be the theme which engages it. No subject exalts it into Imagi- 
nation. When Moore is termed " a fanciful poet," the epithet is 
applied with precision. He is. He is fanciful in " Lalla Rookh," 
and had he written the "Inferno," in the "Inferno" he would 
have contrived to be still fanciful and nothing beyond. 

XLII. 

When we speak of " a suspicious man," we may mean either 
one who suspects, or one to be suspected. Our language needs 
either the adjective ""Buspectful," or the adjective " suspectable." 

XLIII. 

" To love," says Spencer, " is 

To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run, 
To speed, to give, to want, to be undone. 

The philosophy, here, might be rendered more profound, by 
the mere omission of a comma. We all know the willing blind- 
ness — the voluntary madness of Love. We express this in thus 
punctuating the last line : 

To speed, to give — to want to be undone. 

It is a case, in short, where we gain a point by omitting it. 
XLIV. 

Miss Edge worth seems to have had only an approximate com- 
prehension of " Fashion," for she says : " If it was the fashion to 
burn me, and I at the stake, I hardly know ten persons of my ac- 
quaintance who would refuse to throw on a fagot." There are 
many who, in such a case, would " refuse to throw on a fagot " 
— for fear of smothering out the fire. 

XLV. 

I am beginning to think with Horsely — that " the People have 
nothing to do with the laws but to obey them." 



FIFTY SUGGESTIONS. 607 

XLVI. 
" It is not fair to review my book without reading it," says 
Mr. Mathews, talking at the critics, and, as usual, expecting impos- 
sibilities. The man who is clever enough to write such a work, 
is clever enough to read it, no doubt ; but we should not look 
for so much talent in the world at large. Mr. Mathews will not 
imagine that I mean to blame him. The book alone is in fault, 
after all. The fact is that, " er lasst sich nicht lesen" — it will not 
permit itself to be read. Being a hobby of Mr. Mathew's, and 
brimful of spirit, it will let nobody mount it but Mr. Mathews. 

XLVII. 

It is only to teach his children Geography, that G wears a 

boot the picture of Italy upon the map. 

XLVIII. 

In his great Dictionary, Webster seems to have had an idea of 

being more English than the English — "plus Arabe qu'en 

Arabie."* " ■ 

XLIX. 

That there were once " seven wise men " is by no means, 
strictly speaking, an historical fact ; and I am rather inclined to 
rank the idea among the Kabbala. 

L. 

Painting their faces to look like Macaulay, some of our critics 
manage to resemble him, at length, as a Massaccian does a Raf- 
faellian Virgin ; and, except that the former is feebler and thinner 
than the other — suggesting the idea of its being the ghost of the 
other — not one connoisseur in ten can perceive any difference. 
But then, unhappily, even the street lazzaroni can feel the dis- 
tinction. 

* Count Anthony Hamilton. 







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